Imagine if you could take the pain away from the memory of a loved one dying or the harsh break up of a long relationship. In Chapter 7 of the textbook, the idea about having the capabilities to erase painful or traumatic experiences is brought up. Two scientists in the 1990s, Lawrence Cahill and James McGaugh, performed an experiment in which some of the participants in the study were given the drug propranolol, which blocks the effects of adrenaline on beta-adrenergic receptors. Typically, this class of drugs, called beta blockers, are used to treat high blood pressure, arrhythmias, and other conditions concerning the heart as well as migraines and glaucoma. However, when Cahill and McGaugh used propranolol in their study to inhibit adrenaline, participants did not have very good recall of emotionally arousing parts of a traumatic story they were read. Roger Pitman, a psychiatrist, also experimented with propranolol to see how it effected people who had experienced traumatic situations such as car accidents. His study showed that none of the people who had been given propranolol prior to replays of their individual crashes showed a physical response to the tapes as opposed to forty-three percent of participants who had been given a placebo. Both of these studies show that propranolol can lessen the effects of traumatic experiences. The fact that experiences can be dampened by a pill leads one to wonder if traumatic events could ever be completely erased from a person's memory. If it is possible, would it be a good idea to make memory erasing available to anyone who wanted it? After considering this question, I firmly believe that it would not be a good idea. While traumatic experiences can alter a person's life irrevocably, the memories can be learned from and help make them who they are. If everyone was able to erase painful events from their memories, there would be no way to learn from them and avoid possible recurrences in the future.
This is a very interesting article that discusses the possibility of erasing memories and it's potential pros and cons.
http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/memory_drugs_sd.html
richa938: October 2011 Archives
Imagine living with a condition that could cause you to fall into a deep sleep at almost any moment. Even something as simple as laughing at a joke could cause you to feel an overwhelming urge to sleep. This is what people with narcolepsy deal with every day of their lives. Narcolepsy is a disorder that causes episodes of sudden sleep which can last from a few seconds to a full hour. During a narcoleptic episode, a person experiences cataplexy, which is a complete loss of muscle tone. Cataplexy is not abnormal in itself; everyone ordinarily experiences it when they enter REM sleep, but narcoleptics remain conscious the whole time yet cannot move. It is believed that narcolepsy is caused by a sleep-wake cycle that is out of sync, since patients dive right into REM sleep when they have an episode. Genetics may play a role in who gets narcolepsy but brain-damage may also result in forming the disorder. It typically starts in childhood and lasts throughout a person's lifetime.The hormone orexin also provides insight on to what could cause narcolepsy: people with the disorder have a smaller number of brain cells that produce orexin. While there is not currently a cure for narcolepsy, the medication modafinil is used to bolster wakefulness and has been quite effective. I believe narcolepsy is an important disorder to study because it is very debilitating to those who suffer from it. People with narcolepsy may find it hard to maintain a stable job since an attack could be triggered at any moment. Also, such common tasks as driving or walking down a long flight of stairs could be potentially fatal to someone who suffers from narcolepsy, as they could suddenly have an episode and cause a lot of harm to themselves and others. This video shows an older man who suffers from narcolepsy and the daily trials he goes through.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2x14qETS7E
Our brains process sensory inputs unconsciously all the time, such as when we make slight steering adjustments as we drive a vehicle. It is necessary for our brains to process certain inputs unconsciously, as we would experience sensory overload if we were to consciously think about every input we're exposed to. Due to the fact that we naturally engage in subliminal information processing, such concepts as subliminal advertising is very intriguing to many people. Subliminal advertising stems from the idea of subliminal perception, the processing of sensory information that occurs below the threshold of consciousness. In compelling experiments, it has been shown that subliminal perception is a very real event. Studies such as the one in which researchers subliminally presented words pertaining to religious figures showed that the subjects were less likely to cheat than those that had not been exposed to the religious words. These experiments provide proof for the influence subliminal messages have on our conscious actions. From subliminal perception comes the debated idea of subliminal persuasion, a category under which subliminal advertising falls. Although most researchers believe that subliminal persuasion is not effective and lacks supporting evidence, many people of the public are still interested in the topic. I don't really believe it, but I think it's something to be aware of, as it could apply to everyone's life in some way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg
This video shows a very interesting example of subliminal perception.
