Erasing the Hard Drive

August 18, 2007 - 10:29 AM by Stephanie

What better way to improve short term memory than to get rid of the long term?

Sound ridiculous?

Not according to this story which claims a joint Israel-America research team is working on a new drug that can erase long term memory. Logic being that long term memory impedes short term retention. The drug’s target clientele is dementia sufferers.

So far, testing has only been carried out on rats because it’s too risky and invasive to try out on humans.

In the study, published on Thursday in the journal Science, the researchers fed the rats saccharine, which made them sick and taught them to associate the taste with feeling unwell.

They then injected an enzyme inhibitor called ZIP into the rats’ brains that blocked a protein, PKMzeta, which controls the flow of information involving memory between brain cells.

After the injection, the rats did not remember the association with saccharine, no matter how long the researchers had trained them to do so, said Dudai, a researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

This suggests a key mechanism in the brain works like a piece of machinery to store long-term memory, Dudai said. Once the machinery stops, memory shuts down.

“This research is important because it casts light on the mechanisms of memory,” Dudai said. “It also shows that long-term memory is not a permanent change and can be edited.”

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