The September 2007 issue of Nature Reviews Neuroscience reports that scientists have found a way to facilitate the extinction of conditioned fear in mice. In other words, they’ve discovered a quicker way to make mice forget that they were taught to be afraid of something. Although the procedure used, and the hypothesized cause of the effect, are thoroughly arcane to the layperson (infusing a Cdk5 inhibitor into the hippocampus after extinction trials, leading to a redistribution of p35 from the membrane to the cytosol of hippocampal lysates) the implications are clearly stated:

“This study provides a molecular mechanism for the regulation of fear extinction. It opens up new avenues for the development of drugs that will target this pathway and which may, eventually, be used to extinguish specific memories.”

Obviously, for people who suffer from phobias or soldiers dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a drug to “forget” could have a powerful and positive impact. But in the age of mass television advertising for prescriptions drugs such as Vioxx, Viagra and Lunesta (My personal bane. Why are these guys always advertising during the Daily Show? Does laughter cause insomnia?) I think it has become naïve to suppose that people only take drugs when a doctor determines it is absolutely necessary based on sound, medical judgment. So, without getting all Alduous Huxley on you, here’s my question: How much would you pay to be able to forget the terrible things that have happened to you in life?

Would the world be a better place if when your friends told you to “forget about it and move on” you actually could?

Further Reading:

Farahnaz Sananbenesi , Andre Fischer, Xinyu Wang, Christina Schrick, Rachael Neve, Jelena Radulovic & Li-Huei Tsai (2007) A hippocampal Cdk5 pathway regulates extinction of contextual fear. Nature Neuroscience. 10, 1012-1019