Editing human memory now a possibility

A drug to edit your bad memories on way?

Researchers see a grand promise in ZIP – a drug that interferes with PKMzeta molecule in the brain – which has been succesful in editing memory in rats.

Researchers are reportedly zoomed in on a molecule that can potentially edit or erase certain unpleasant aspects of human memory.

You would be able forget the memory of a fear, or a trauma of  separation or death or even chuck out a nagging habit through manipulating a key substance in the brain, researchers in Brooklyn have found. Human memory editing has always been a matter of science fiction – and now it is closer to reality.

Studies conducted in animals prove that the new molecule can block the activity of a substance in the brain that is key to retain learned information. But scientists claim the same thing can be replicated identically in people too, potentially leading to actual editing of human memories.

The substance could also help ward off dementias and other memory problems, the researchers claim.

“If this molecule is as important as it appears to be, you can see the  possible implications,” said Dr. Todd C. Sacktor, a 52-year-old neuroscientist who leads the team at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center, in Brooklyn, which demonstrated its effect on memory. “For trauma. For addiction, which is a learned behavior. Ultimately for improving memory and learning.”

Though scientists have isolated hundreds of molecules, the one substance currently in question is called PKMzeta. In a series of studies, Dr. Sacktor’s lab found that this molecule was present and activated in cells precisely when they were put on speed-dial by a neighboring neuron.

“After that,” Dr. Sacktor said, “we began to focus solely on PKMzeta to see how critical it really was to behavior.”

But when injected — directly into their brain — with a drug called ZIP that interferes with PKMzeta, they are back to square one, almost immediately.

The experiment has been repeated in various ways, each using a different method. Researchers led by Yadin Dudai at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel found that one dose of ZIP even made rats forget a strong disgust they had developed for a taste that had made them sick — three months earlier.

Researchers say blocking PKMzeta could potentially be far more effective than already tried out, existing drugs to numb painful memories and addictive urges.

This critical memory molecule is perhaps the result of the relatively new, but fast-emerging research field–neuroscience or the study of the brain. Neuroscience is currently very much in spotlight attracting billions of dollars.

The National Institutes of Health last year spent $5.2 billion, nearly 20 percent of its total budget, on brain-related projects, according to the Society for Neuroscience.

Universities such as Columbia and Yale and endowments including Wellcome Trust and the Kavli Foundation have put in hundreds of millions of dollars more into Neuroscience. 

“This possibility of memory editing has enormous possibilities and raises huge ethical issues,” said Dr. Steven E. Hyman, a neurobiologist at Harvard. “On the one hand, you can imagine a scenario in which a person enters a setting which elicits traumatic memories, but now has a drug that weakens those memories as they come up. Or, in the case of addiction, a drug that weakens the associations that stir craving.”

The properties of PKMzeta promise something grander. By 2050 more than 100 million people worldwide will have Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias, scientists estimate, and far more will struggle with age-related memory decline.

“This is really the biggest target, and we have some ideas of how you might try to do it, for instance to get cells to make more PKMzeta,” Dr. Sacktor said. “But these are only ideas at this stage.”