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Nader's report has triggered a minor research industry, focusing on the exact details of the reactivation process and the cellular mechanisms involved - for instance, my own lab has shown that in some crucial ways the biochemical pathways involved differ from those during initial learning, engaging different brain regions and different types of protein. However, it has also raised in some people's minds the serious question of whether it might indeed prove possible to erase unwanted memories in humans. Perhaps in a wish to make headlines, attract grant funds or the interest of biotech companies, they have suggested that such erasure might prove useful in treating one of those newly labelled conditions so beloved of modern psychiatrist: post-traumatic stress disorder.
It seems these days that in the immediate aftermath of any horrific murder or other disaster, grief counsellors are blue-lighted in to treat survivors, relatives and shocked bystanders. Soldiers returning from battle, police and emergency workers, even those recovering from a messy divorce, are being diagnosed with PTSD, whose symptoms are described as recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, perceptions or dreams, acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring. So might it not prove possible to erase the unwanted memory?