Ways to erase unhappy memories

We all have things we'd like to forget - being the victim of a crime, a bad relationship, an embarrassing faux pas. What if we could erase those bad memories? Or at least take the edge off them?

"We don't remember everything, only bits and pieces," says Jason Chan, an assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State University. "We take these pieces (when we recall a memory) and reconstruct a story that makes sense to us. But it might not be correct."

Those memories can also be altered. Writing on the Scientific American Blog Network earlier this year, neuroscientist R. Douglas Fields explained that when a specific memory is recalled, it is vulnerable to being altered or even extinguished for a certain period of time."

There are other methods of altering memories. Certain drugs, protein inhibitors, have been shown to make memories more malleable. Electric shocks to the brain can also erase certain memories, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have found a gene that can help with memory extinction. Even alcohol can do the job. Chan says that alcohol affects the memory formation mechanism. Research continues in all these areas.