#karim nader

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“On the Rocks,” Faqra, Lebanon,

Karim Nader Studio in Partnership with Roula Assaf,

Photography by Dia Mrad

Model Photography by Marwan Harmouche

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TEDxUChicago 2012

Karim Nader on Memory Manipulation

Karim Nader is a professor at McGill University in the department of Psychology. As a neuroscientist he works to understand what neurobiological processes are involved in acquiring and storing memories, especially relating to fear, in order to use the study of memory reconsolidation to treat anxiety disorders. Dr. Nader made a breakthrough in the field in 1999, when he first revived and tested the obscure theory that memories do not necessarily remain stable--think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. 

Last spring he came to Hyde Park for the TEDxUChicago conference to discuss his work on memory manipulation. Take a look.

[fuckyeahdrugpolicy]

The forgetting pill: How a new drug can erase your worst memories | Wired 

In the late 90s, Karim Nader, a young neuroscientist studying emotional response at New York University, realised that nobody knew. "My big advantage was that I wasn't trained in memory," Nader says. "I was very naive about the subject."

He began with the simplest question he could think of. While it was clear that new proteins were needed for the making of memories -- proteins are cellular bricks and mortar, the basis of any new biological construction -- were additional proteins made when those memories were recalled? Nader hypothesised that they were, and he realised that he could test his notion by temporarily blocking protein synthesis in a brain and looking to see if that altered recall.

His boss, neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, wasn't optimistic. "I told Karim he was wasting his time," LeDoux says. To LeDoux, the reason was obvious: even if Nader blocked protein synthesis during recall, the original circuitry would still be intact, so the memory should be too. Any amnesia induced would be temporary. LeDoux and Nader made a bet: if Nader failed to permanently erase fear memories in four lab animals, he had to buy LeDoux a bottle of tequila.

He taught several dozen rats to associate a loud noise with a mild but painful electric shock. It terrified them -- whenever the sound played, the rats froze in fear. After reinforcing this memory for several weeks, Nader hit the rats with the noise again, but this time he then injected their brains with a chemical that inhibited protein synthesis. Then he played the sound again. "I couldn't believe what happened," Nader says. "The fear memory was gone. The rats had forgotten everything." The absence of fear persisted even after the injection wore off. The secret was the timing: if new proteins couldn't be created during the act of remembering, then the memory ceased to exist. The erasure was also exceedingly specific. The rats could still learn new associations and they remained scared of other sounds associated with a shock that hadn't been played during the protein block. They forgot only what they'd been forced to remember while under the influence of the protein inhibitor.

The disappearance of the fear memory suggested that every time we think about the past we are delicately transforming its cellular representation in the brain, changing its underlying neural circuitry. It was a stunning discovery: memories are not formed and then pristinely maintained, as neuroscientists thought; they are formed and then rebuilt every time they're accessed.

[...] The larger lesson is that because our memories are formed by the act of remembering them, controlling the conditions under which they are recalled can actually change their content.  

One intriguing approach to treating PTSD that emerged recently involves administering certain drugs and then asking patients to recall their bad memories. In one 2010 clinical trial, subjects suffering from PTSD were given MDMA (ecstasy) while undergoing talk therapy. Because the drug triggers a rush of positive emotion, the patients recalled their trauma without feeling overwhelmed. As a result, the remembered event was associated with the positive feelings triggered by the pill. According to the researchers, 83 per cent of their patients showed a dramatic decrease in symptoms within two months. That makes ecstasy one of the most effective PTSD treatments ever devised.

[...] Right now, researchers have to inject their obliviating potions directly into the rodent brain. Future treatments, however, will involve targeted inhibitors that become active only in particular parts of the cortex and only at the precise time a memory is being recalled. The result will be a menu of pills capable of erasing different kinds of memories. These negative thoughts and feelings can be made to vanish, even as the rest of the memory remains intact. "We can get very specific about which associations we go after," LeDoux says. "And that's a very good thing. Nobody actually wants a totally spotless mind." 

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