In science fiction books and films, the motive of "erasing" certain events from a person's memory is often encountered. Most often this is done by "evil" scientists or aliens who kidnap people for experiments. Such stories make readers and viewers wonder if this is possible in reality.
Human memory cannot be represented as some kind of "granary book" in which everything that a person has ever seen, heard and experienced is recorded once and for all. Memory is a living phenomenon, nerve connections in the cerebral cortex arise and disappear. First of all, those connections that are too rarely activated or not activated at all break up - that is why a person forgets the information that he does not use.
In some cases, forgetting plays the role of a defense mechanism: memory gets rid of traumatic information associated with negative emotions. This is especially often associated with severe fright, while the consequences of stress in the form of a nervous breakdown remain. So, in the Middle Ages, legends were born about the abduction of people by elves, goblin and other fantastic creatures, and now - about abduction by aliens.
The problem of artificial forgetting is associated with the need to help people suffering from negative memories. To a certain extent, hypnosis provides this opportunity. In such experiments, people, at the command of the hypnotist, even forgot their name for a few minutes. Some of the results are amazing. For example, one hypnotist made a patient forget about … allergies. During the next flowering of herbs, this person did not really feel the painful symptoms usual for him. However, the possibilities of hypnosis in this regard are limited: memories do not disappear, but are blocked, and something can bring them back to life. The patient in question reappeared with an allergy after talking to a doctor about it.
Memory can be chemically influenced, for example by blocking the action of the enzyme protein kinase. A group of scientists from the University of California, led by D. Glantzman, proved the possibility of blocking negative memories in this way. True, the object of research was the snail, its nervous system is incomparable with the human, and no one can say how selective forgetting will be in humans.
Similar "memory pills" that weaken neural connections are also being developed by Russian scientists headed by K. Anokhin. It is supposed to use this drug against the background of active recall by the patient of those episodes that he would like to forget. But we are not talking about practical application yet. According to K. Anokhin, "brain chemistry is much easier to break than improve."
Genuine memories can be partially blocked by creating false ones. For this, it may be enough to give an installation. For example, in one experiment, subjects were asked if they had met Bunny the rabbit at Disneyland. People remembered such a meeting, despite the fact that this character is not in Disneyland. Sometimes the attitude is set by the mood prevailing in society. For example, in the 70s. 20th century many American women "recalled" sexual abuse by their father, uncle or older brother, allegedly taking place in childhood. It is also possible to purposefully introduce false memories to a specific person, especially if he is distinguished by increased suggestibility.
In general, scientists are restrained about the idea of selective memory erasure. If this becomes technically possible in the future, no one can say how forgetting negative episodes from the past will affect the patient's memory and his mental life as a whole.
