Propranolol - the memory pill

[Alicia]

post article on here hun. Swia wishes she had something that could get rid of horrible memories.

[Nagognog2]

Threads Merged.

[ojos_de_brujo]

Propanolol was prescribed to Swim to help with the exams. Swim is a bit too much in touch with her ancestoral fight and run reaction. She literally runs away from exams. And she actually will fight to prevent someone from dragging her to an exam.
Propanolol keeps Swim from running, but the problem is that the instinct to fight and run is pretty closely related to the one necessary to succesfully hunt/ pass an exam.
Also, if one is still scared after a dose of propanolol, one is tempted to up the dose, leading to hypotension, which doesn't help the brain to get focussed for an exam.
If propanolol really prevents memories from being made, taking it while studying is pretty problematic.

About the ptss, the fear associated with ptss is a very rational conditioned avoidance reaction. If evolution has given us the ability to learn from past experience, why take a drug that makes it possible to make the same mistake over and over again?
Treating ptss to me, is not about helping forget what happened but about giving it a place in one's life.
Of course, this is a painful process, and some may never be able to complete it. (there's nothing wrong with pain management)
Trauma changes a person forever and Swim believes that if one can overcome trauma, one will see through the lies of society. In this Utopia of Swim these survivors are the truly wise who choose to stand on the margin of society, since they no longer see a point in joining the rat race, and attending people of their ways. They are the wise, the wizards and witches, the psychonauts.

Oops, Swim let her tribal, hunting and gathering self get carried away.

Reputation Comments on this post:

	Spot on analysis!
	interesting post, bringing good new elements to the discussion

[Lunar Loops]

More on this from The Telegraph (UK):
Scientists find drug to banish bad memories


By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 01/07/2007

It failed to bring Jim Carrey happiness in the award-winning film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but scientists have now developed a way to block and even delete unwanted memories from people's brains.
Researchers have found they can use drugs to wipe away single, specific memories while leaving other memories intact. By injecting an amnesia drug at the right time, when a subject was recalling a particular thought, neuro-scientists discovered they could disrupt the way the memory is stored and even make it disappear.
The research has, however, sparked concern among parliamentary advisers who insist that new regulations are now needed to control the use of the drugs to prevent them becoming used by healthy people as a "quick fix".

But the US scientists behind the research insist that amnesia drugs could be invaluable in treating patients with psychiatric disorders such as post-traumatic stress.
In a new study, revealed in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, psychiatrists at McGill University, in Montreal, and Harvard University, in Boston, used an amnesia drug to "dampen" the memories of trauma victims.
Prof Karim Nader, of McGill University, said: "When you remember old memories they can become 'unstored' and then have to be 'restored'.
"As the memory is getting restored, we gave patients a drug that turns down the emotional part of the memory. It left the conscious part of the memory intact, so they could still remember all the details but without being overwhelmed by the memory."
The research suggests memories can be manipulated because they act as if made from glass, existing in a molten state as they are being created, before turning solid. When the memory is recalled, however, it becomes molten again and so can be altered before it once more resets.
The drug used by the scientists is thought to disrupt the biochemical pathways that allow the memory to "harden" after it is recalled.
The researchers used propranolol, a drug normally used to treat hypertension in heart disease patients but also known to cause memory problems. They treated 19 accident or rape victims for 10 days with the drug or with dummy pills, while they asked to describe their memories of a traumatic event that happened 10 years earlier.
A week later, they found that the patients given the drug suffered fewer signs of stress such as raised heart rate when recalling their trauma.
The technique echoes scenes from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where the characters played by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet both undergo treatment to delete each other from their memories.
In the film, scientists ask the characters to remember their unwanted memories in order to target them with small electric shocks. But the treatment goes drastically wrong, when the characters discover they in fact wanted to hold on to the memories after all.
Scientists at New York University have published another new study where they claim to have erased a single memory from the brains of rats while leaving the rest of the animals' memories still intact.
The rats were trained to associate two musical tones with a mild electrical shock so that when they heard either of the tones they would brace themselves for a shock.
The researchers then gave half the rats a drug, called U0126 and known to cause limited amnesia, when playing one of the musical tones.
After the treatment, the rats that had been given the drug no longer associated that particular tone with an imminent shock but still braced themselves upon hearing the second tone, demonstrating only one memory had been deleted.
Prof Joseph LeDoux, who led the New York team, said: "Such treatments may have highly specific and potentially permanent effects."
The research has alarmed some experts, however, who fear that memory altering drugs could be abused by healthy individuals to delete unwanted memories on a whim.
A new report published by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, which advises MPs about scientific advances, warned that regulations need to be put in place to restrict the use of any memory-blocking drugs, imposing strict limits on their prescription.
Dr Peter Border, who edited the report, said: "There has been a deafening silence from the regulators about whether or not they might consider licensing pharmaceuticals for use in individuals where there is no medical benefits. There is a need for someone to consider how to regulate these things."

[Lunar Loops]

This from The Guardian (UK):

We should think twice about amnesia drugs

Linda Blair
Wednesday July 4, 2007

You cannot change your past, but what if you could alter the way you remember it? What if you could even delete some memories entirely? Many people who have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder seek psychological help to do just that. In North America, scientists are going further, looking for ways to alter memories neurochemically. Recent studies at McGill and Harvard universities have used propranolol, a drug that is normally used to treat heart disease, to help people who have suffered a trauma. They found that those who took the drug during a period of "controlled recall" showed fewer signs of stress the next time that they were asked to remember the event. The researchers suggest that the drug may have helped "dampen" the memories - that is, removed their ability to cause distress.
This is what most clinicians who work with trauma victims try to do. They do not discourage people from remembering what happened but they help them learn to tolerate the pain. We know that once patients can do this, they can move on. However, I am less convinced that someone will move on if he simply cannot remember what happened. The human brain is designed to explain and to understand. If there are missing chunks in the memory, I think it will cause more distress than it will relieve.

Even so, at New York University, they appear to be trying to erase memories altogether - in rats, at least. The rats were trained to associate two musical tones with a mild electrical shock; from then on, they would brace themselves when they heard the tone. Then half the rats were given a drug called U0126 while they heard one of the tones. Thereafter, they no longer braced themselves, leading researchers to conclude that U0126 had "deleted" the memory it targeted.
The connection that has been made between these two studies is worrying. Deleting memories did not help Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey much in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Indeed, would many of us really want gaps in our memories, particularly if others around us could still remember what we no longer could? Because the rats cannot talk to us, we do not know whether they are unable to remember what they learned, or whether they still remember but just cannot react to what they know. So, caution, please. We understand so little about the marvellously complex human brain.
Linda Blair is a clinical psychologist and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society.

[~lostgurl~]

My gurl has just been prescribed with propanolol (Cardinol) for social anxiety. She tried it out for the first time yesterday and WOW she can't believe this isn't the preferred medication for social anxiety. My gurl took 40mgs and half a clonazepam (.25mg) which by itself would usually have no effect and met up with a new friend and felt no anxiety...... It worked much better than clonazepam. Every time she has found a medication online that she thinks will work for something she always feels let down, but this time she was pleasantly surprised. This could really help change my gurls life! There is no interaction with alcohol (no blackouts) it is not psychoactive or addictive and can be used as needed.

Thanks to a certain mouse for excellent advice!

Reputation Comments on this post:

Doh, I Must have lost a few points, as I can't seem to give 20 anymore (maybe I was dreaming)... anyways, you post was ...

[thrackelsby]

Honestly, though, what good can come of a drug that completely erases a memory. I can imagine the Gov't forcing prisoners to take it."No, of course you weren't tortured, silly little person, do you remember that happening? Didn't think so."

Another problem, what if you're in the middle of remembering your rape experience while being dosed with propranolol, and the memory of your wedding springs to your mind?

[Expat98]

Here's another (older) article on this.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer

Is Every Memory Worth Keeping?
Controversy Over Pills to Reduce Mental Trauma

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 19, 2004; Page A01



Kathleen Logue was waiting at a traffic light when two men smashed her car's side window, pointed a gun at her head and ordered her to drive. For hours, Logue fought off her attackers' attempts to rape her, and finally she escaped. But for years afterward, she was tormented by memories of that terrifying day.

So years later, after a speeding bicycle messenger knocked the Boston paralegal onto the pavement in front of oncoming traffic, Logue jumped at a chance to try something that might prevent her from being haunted by her latest ordeal.

"I didn't want to suffer years and years of cold sweats and nightmares and not being able to function again," Logue said. "I was prone to it because I had suffered post-traumatic stress from being carjacked. I didn't want to go through that again."

Logue volunteered for an experiment designed to test whether taking a pill immediately after a terrorizing experience might reduce the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The study is part of a promising but controversial field of research seeking to alter, or possibly erase, the impact of painful memories -- a concept dubbed "therapeutic forgetting" by some and taken to science fiction extremes in films such as this summer's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

Proponents say it could lead to pills that prevent or treat PTSD in soldiers coping with the horrors of battle, torture victims recovering from brutalization, survivors who fled the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and other victims of severe, psychologically devastating experiences.

"Some memories can be very disruptive. They come back to you when you don't want to have them -- in a daydream or nightmare or flashbacks -- and are usually accompanied by very painful emotions," said Roger K. Pitman, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who is studying the approach. "This could relieve a lot of that suffering."

Skeptics, however, argue that tinkering with memories treads into dangerous territory because memories are part of the very essence of a person's identity, as well as crucial threads in the fabric of society that help humanity avoid the mistakes of the past.

"All of us can think of traumatic events in our lives that were horrible at the time but made us who we are. I'm not sure we'd want to wipe those memories out," said Rebecca S. Dresser, a medical ethicist at Washington University in St. Louis who serves on the President's Council on Bioethics, which condemned the research last year. "We don't have an omniscient view of what's best for the world."

Some fear anything designed for those severely disabled by psychic damage will eventually end up being used far more casually -- to, perhaps, forget a bad date or a lousy day at work.

"You can easily imagine a scenario of 'I was embarrassed at my boss's party last night, and I want to take something to forget it so I can have more confidence when I go into the office tomorrow,' " said David Magnus, co-director of Stanford University's Center for Biomedical Ethics. "It's not hard to imagine that it will end up being used much more broadly."

So far, only a handful of small studies have been conducted in people in the United States and France, most testing a drug called propranolol, which blocks the action of stress hormones that etch memories in the brain. The results suggest drugs may be able to prevent traumatic memories from being stored with such disturbing intensity in the first place, or perhaps deaden effects of old memories if taken shortly after they have been reawakened. The results have been promising enough that researchers are planning larger studies in several countries, including the United States, Canada, France and Israel, testing propranolol and other drugs, including the active components of marijuana.

"You always have the ability to misuse science," said Joseph E. LeDoux, a New York University memory researcher planning one of the studies. "But this isn't going to be radical surgery on memory. All we'd like to do is help people have better control of memories they want or prevent intrusive memories from coming into their minds when they don't want them."

The ability to manipulate memory has long been the stuff of science fiction, inspiring fears of government mind control and films such as the 1962 classic "The Manchurian Candidate." No one is anywhere near having the power to extract the memory of a love affair or implant complex new memories, as depicted in "Eternal Sunshine" and a 2004 "Manchurian Candidate" remake.

But scientists have started taking the first tentative steps toward developing treatments based on new insights into why emotionally charged events -- whether it be President John F. Kennedy's assassination, Sept. 11 or a first kiss -- create such indelible memories.

"Whatever is being learned at the time of emotional arousal is learned much more strongly," said James L. McGaugh of the University of California at Irvine. McGaugh demonstrated that strong emotions -- fear, love, hate, panic -- trigger stress hormones such as adrenalin and cortisol, which activate a part of the brain called the amygdala, creating unusually vivid, emotionally charged memories. "Any strong emotion will have that effect. It could be winning a Nobel Prize. It could be a very faint whisper in the ear, 'I love you,' at the right time."

Propranolol, widely used for heart patients, blocks the action of stress hormones on the amygdala, which led researchers to start testing whether it could prevent PTSD. The study Logue was in, along with a similar one in France, found that people who took propranolol immediately after a traffic accident or some other traumatic experience had fewer physical symptoms of PTSD months later.

"I really think it helped," said Logue, 35. "It helped not bring back my earlier bout with post-traumatic stress and made it easier to cope with this new incident. I look both ways before I cross a one-way street now, but I'm not in a panic."

So far, the research has suggested only that the emotional effects of memories may be blunted, not that the memories themselves are erased.

"I think it's an unfortunate misconception that it's blotting out memories," said Charles R. Marmar of the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, who helped conduct the French study. "What it does is help people manage the memories so they can tolerate them."

But other researchers are trying to go further, possibly deadening or even obliterating any effects of old memories.

"People had thought that once a memory was stored or consolidated it stays that way. People thought, it's there for life -- it's fixed," said Karim Nader, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal. "We showed that wasn't the case."

Laboratory rats trained to fear a tone completely lost that fear when scientists injected into their brains a drug that blocked formation of proteins necessary for memory storage while the animals were prompted to reexperience fear and store the memory again.

"When you activate a memory, it comes back up in a dynamic state and has to be restabilized using the same mechanisms that stored it in the first place. You can interfere with that," Nader said.

A small preliminary study being presented next week at a Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego tested for the first time whether propranolol can affect old memories in people.

"We have no idea whether it's erasing memory or putting a fence around the memory," LeDoux said. "But from the point of view of the PTSD patient, it doesn't matter as long as the effects are gone."

But some ethicists question this whole line of research.

"Our experiences and our memories in a lot of ways define us and define who we are," Magnus said. "And so that's a scary step to go down. We should be very careful about going down a path that could lead to a serious alteration of the core essence of our identities."

Beyond the personal impact, ethicists also worry about the societal implications.

"Consider the case of a person who has suffered or witnessed atrocities that occasion unbearable memories: for example, those with firsthand experience of the Holocaust," the President's Council on Bioethics wrote. "The life of that individual might well be served by dulling such bitter memories, but such a humanitarian intervention, if widely practiced, would seem deeply troubling: Would the community as a whole -- would the human race -- be served by such a mass numbing of this terrible but indispensable memory?"

The researchers acknowledge the prickly ethical questions but argue that the research should go forward because of its potential to alleviate suffering.

"I approach it from a medical standpoint -- that PTSD is as much a medical disorder as a broken leg," Pitman said. "I don't say they don't have legitimate concerns, but it's hard to argue we shouldn't pursue this just because of ethical speculations."

Psychiatrists at the University of California at San Diego are finishing a follow-up pilot study on accident victims. Pitman and the French team are starting bigger studies to confirm their initial emergency room findings. And Nader and colleagues in Montreal, and LeDoux and his colleagues in New York, are beginning studies in PTSD patients who will take propranolol immediately after reliving their traumatic memories to see if it can affect memory re-storage, known as "reconsolidation." Researchers at Hebrew University in Jerusalem are planning a similar study involving the active ingredient in marijuana.

Marmar and Pitman are working on identifying those most prone to PTSD, with the idea that they could receive propranolol immediately after a terrorist attack or some other traumatizing disaster.

"If this is safe and effective, it's one of the few tools we'd have in the case of a mass disaster," Marmar said. "What are you going to do if there's a dirty bomb? You'll have widespread panic. Do you want these poor people to be haunted by this searing memory?"

[Synesthesiac]

Originally Posted by thrackelsby

Honestly, though, what good can come of a drug that completely erases a memory. I can imagine the Gov't forcing prisoners to take it."No, of course you weren't tortured, silly little person, do you remember that happening? Didn't think so."

I dont think it quite works like that. I think that it just means that people can relive their old traumatic memories without the emotional side effects attatched to them. And the more often they do this the more the memories will be re-enforced with the bonus of being devoid of the emotionally charged aspect, which is what propranolol is so effective at blocking. Its not like brain washing, they will still remember it, it just wont cause the same emotional reaction as it used to. I'm sure we've all got a couple of embarressing memories that make our stomachs turn or heart beat a little faster when we think of them. For people with severe PTSD that is what happens but 100x worse, and is what the Propranolol is good at stopping.

I cant help thinking that Propranolol is being trumpeted as a cure to draw attention away from the evil and illegal (though amazingly sucessful) cure for PTSD that is MDMA. The army have been using it for years in trials on traumatised soldiers with amazingly good results.

Reputation Comments on this post:

I think that's a good explanation of how propanolol works to "erase" bad memories. As you note, the term &quo...

[RaverHippie]

I just heard mention of this type of application in an article discussing the battery of medications given to soldiers. This was mentioned in a "preemptive strike" against PTSD.

As the chemical interventions grow bolder and more sophisticated, we should not be surprised that some are beginning to cast their eyes beyond droopy eyelids and sore muscles. Chief among the new horizons is the alluring notion of psychological prophylactics: drugs used to pre-empt the often nasty effects of combat stress on soldiers, particularly that perennial veteran's bugaboo known as post-traumatic stress disorder syndrome. In the U.S., where roughly two-fifths of troops returning from combat deployments are presenting serious mental health problems, PTSD has gone political in form of the Psychological Kevlar Act, which would direct the Secretary of Defense to implement "preventive and early-intervention measures" to protect troops against "stress-related psychopathologies."
Proponents of the "Psychological Kevlar" approach to PTSD may have found a silver bullet in the form of propranolol, a 50-year-old beta-blocker used on-label to treat high blood pressure, and off-label as a stress-buster for performers and exam-takers. Ongoing psychiatric research has intriguingly suggested that a dose of propranolol, taken soon after a harrowing event, can suppress the victim's stress response and effectively block the physiological process that makes certain memories intense and intrusive. That the drug is cheap and well tolerated is icing on the cake.
Propranolol has already been dubbed the "mourning after pill," largely by those who argue that its military use amounts to medicating away pangs of conscience. For the time being, though, we can set aside our dystopian visions of zombies with guns, since the tranquilizing effects of beta-blockers are unlikely to permit their widespread use on the battlefield. But pharmacology moves more swiftly with each passing year -- especially when helped along by defense-research dollars -- and we may need to revive those visions sooner than we think.

taken from http://www.alternet.org/story/84178/?page=entire

[Laudaphun]

Just curious if anyone has had any success with propranolol for "test-anxiety". SWIM's marmoset had been given a bottle of propranolol to use for this purpose, but was told to try it out before actually trying it on the day of an exam. The bottle said 1/2 to 1 tablet for test anxiety and marmoset took a full tablet 40mg to test it out, and it provoked anxiety. However, with that being said, the marmoset had also been switched from methylphenidate to d,l-ampetamine (adderall) at this time. The marmoset found the amphetamines to be too harsh and less helpful than the methylphenidate so stopped taking the amphetamines and switched back to methylphenidate after 2 weeks. The marmoset has not been able to see her shrink since, but is wondering if perhaps that propranolol might work differently in conjunction with methylphenidate than with amphetamines, given the drastic difference in effects (side-effects) and the fact that while methylphenidate shares many similarities with amphetamine, it also differs slightly in the mechanism of action.

SWIM is going to try the propranolol once more, and 1/2 tablet this time to see if it can be beneficial for "test anxiety". So far, clonazepam has been the only medicine effective at reducing SWIM's anxiety problem with exams.

[~lostgurl~]

I have talked to a few people who have used propanolol successfully for public speaking, but not specifically for exams.

[lethalman]

heres the video 0f 60 Minutes Propranolol - the memory pill http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhK0EX4G018

lethalman added 9 Minutes and 15 Seconds later...

ahh its them pills ive got 300 spare of them from the past .never knew thay done this.

[drug-bot]

i was prescribed it from my doctor from age 13 to17 for general anxiety disorder (which included lots of social anxiety), it worked wonders for me, for the first time in my life i made friends, didnt feel fear while speaking in front of groups of people.

i should add i was co-currently on prozac for depression

[~lostgurl~]

I have added the video to the archive: 60 Minutes - Memory Pill - Propanolol

[fnord]

Heart pill to erase bad memories

pill taking The drug may alter how the brain deals with memories Scientists believe a common heart medicine may be able to erase fearful memories from the mind. The Dutch investigators believe beta-blocker drugs could help people suffering from the emotional after effects of traumatic experiences. They believe the drug alters how memories are recalled after carrying out the study of 60 people, Nature Neuroscience reports. But British experts questioned the ethics of tampering with the mind. Paul Farmer, chief executive of mental health charity Mind, said he was concerned about the "fundamentally pharmacological" approach to people with problems such as phobias and anxiety. Before eradicating memories, we must reflect on the knock-on effects that this will have on individuals Medical ethics expert Dr Daniel Sokol He said the procedure might also remove good memories and warned against an "accelerated Alzheimer's" approach. In the study, the researchers artificially created a fearful memory by associating pictures of spiders with a mild electric shock delivered to the wrists of the volunteers. A day later the volunteers were split into two groups - one was given the beta blocker propranolol and the other a dummy drug before both were shown the same pictures again. The researchers assessed how fearful of the pictures the volunteers were by playing sudden noises and measuring how strongly they blinked, something called the "startle response". Memories erased The group that had taken beta blockers showed less fear than the group that had taken the placebo pill. The following day, once the drug was out of their system, the volunteers were retested. Once again, those who had taken the beta blocker were less startled by the images. Study leader Professor Merel Kindt and colleagues from the University of Amsterdam say their findings suggest the drugs may completely erase bad memories. Experiments on animals has shown beta blockers can interfere with how the brain makes sense of frightening events. The told PNAS: "Millions of people suffer from emotional disorders and the relapse of fear, even after successful treatment. "Our findings may have important implications for the understanding and treatment of persistent and self-perpetuating memories in individuals suffering from emotional disorders." But Professor Neil Burgess of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience said the research merely demonstrates that the beta blockers reduce a person's startle response, breaking the association of the spider to these unconscious responses. And Dr Daniel Sokol, lecturer in Medical Ethics at St George's, University of London, said memories were important, for people to learn from their mistakes for example. "Removing bad memories is not like removing a wart or a mole. It will change our personal identity since who we are is linked to our memories. It may perhaps be beneficial in some cases, but before eradicating memories, we must reflect on the knock-on effects that this will have on individuals, society and our sense of humanity." John Harris, Professor of Bioethics at the University of Manchester, said: "An interesting complexity is the possibility that victims, say of violence, might wish to erase the painful memory and with it their ability to give evidence against assailants."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7892272.stm