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Young Animals May Be Able to Erase Bad Memories

FRIDAY, Sept. 4 (HealthDay News) -- New Swiss research suggests that young animals may have a mechanism that allows them to jettison traumatic memories, but experts say it's unclear whether humans of any age can do the same.

In fact, scientists are still debating whether human memories truly disappear or simply go into deep storage.

"It's fair to say that most of the researchers in human memory now believe that it's very unlikely memories are really erased," said Mark McDaniel, a psychology professor and memory specialist at Washington University in St. Louis. "What happens probably is that the memories are still stored."

In animals, however, there's evidence that traumatic memories that involve fear are actually erased in the young, said study co-author Cyril Herry, a researcher with the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel, Switzerland.

In adults, however, it seems that such memories can be blocked but still be retrieved later.

In the study, which appears in the Sept. 4 issue of Science, Herry and colleagues gave a slight shock to rats when they heard a tone. If their memory worked properly, they'd later link the two events and be afraid after hearing the tone.

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