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Given your understanding of the role of neuronal actions in learning, memory, and amnesia, do you think it is possible to develop drugs and behavioral procedures to selectively block specific memories?
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Given my understanding, I have absolutely no idea. After having done research, yes I do.
Why or why not?
Much of this depends on the terms utilized and if the terms used can be considered legitimately synonymous. Is blocking the same as repressing or suppressing? Blocking, to me, is not allowing an item to pass through. I equate blocking to football, where an offensive lineman has the task of blocking a defensive lineman in order to protect the quarterback. Freud (1995), gave the name repression to the name of the process in which he noted “there was some force that prevented them from being conscious…pushed the pathogenic experiences in question out of consciousness” as he fought with his patients to recall memories. To add more confusion, allow me to throw into the fray, disassociation, which became the alternative concept for repression. Rofé (2008), states disassociation is used to account for cases where patients did not recall or had limited recollection of traumas and disassociation and repression are used interchangeably because the difference is unclear (p. 75). As suppression is allowed into the fray, the question of the difference between the two begs to be asked. Suppression is forgetting consciously and repression is forgetting unconsciously. At the end of their study, van Schie, Geraerts, and Anderson (2013) stated negative memories may be forgotten through direct suppression (p. 1130). Thus, whether called blocking, repressing, suppressing, or disassociating, negative memories can be put into such a place where they no longer exist.
As far as drugs are concerned there are have been multiple studies with propranolol and fear memories. In one study, Kindt, Soeter, and Vervliet (2009) discussed reconsolidation, where fear memories can be changed when they are recalled. When the hypertension drug, propranolol was given orally to human test subjects before memory reactivation, 24 hours later, the fear memory was erased and the return of fear was prevented (p. 256). This is not quite what is asked, but if a memory is one that triggers fear, then the fear is the real issue. If propranolol can alleviate the fear associated with the memory then the memory is no longer a problem.
