Do you have bad memories from a breakup? Soon you will be able to erase such "unwanted" memories!
According to a new documentary that premiered in the US last week, researchers have found a way to manipulate memory. That means researchers have found a way to erase bad memories from your head – forever and for much longer.
“For much of human history, memory has been viewed as a tape recorder that faithfully records information and plays it back intact,” say the film’s makers. “But now, researchers are discovering that memory is much more malleable and can be written and rewritten, not only by us but also by others. We are discovering the precise mechanisms that can explain, and even control, our memories.”
Jake Hausler from St. Louis is among the documentary's subjects, who can remember in vivid detail everything he has experienced since the age of 8. At age 12, he is the youngest person to be diagnosed with Extremely Superior Autobiographical Memory, which makes it difficult for him to distinguish between trivial and significant events in his past.
The filmmakers also spoke about clinical psychologist Merel Kindt, who has discovered that medications can be used to dispel the negative associations of certain memories – through which she has successfully “cured” her patients of arachnophobia.
André Fenton, a renowned neuroscientist who is currently working on a technique to erase painful memories, says that "Forgetting is perhaps one of the most important things the brain does. We only perceive the tip of the iceberg when it comes to human memory."
Among the other interviewees is Julia Shaw, a professor of psychology at London South Bank University who has designed a system for implanting false memories and successfully convinced participants that they had committed crimes that never happened – research that has potentially worrying implications for the criminal justice system.
The film "Memory Hackers" debuted in the US last Wednesday night, and is scheduled to air on PBS America in the UK at a future date.
