The teacher (Miss Ginger) smiled… ‘What are you most curious about, Shamrock? Things that have already happened, or things that are going to happen?’
‘I’m most curious about anything that’s a mystery!’
Ginger blinked. This one could widen the world.
A white-masked kit stood near, listening. ‘I’m most curious about what’s going to happen!’
The teacher nodded. ‘You’re like most of us, Hopper. What’s already happened, our own history, isn’t as exciting for us as creating new futures.’ She smiled. ‘Why not, Shamrock?’
‘Because we can make any new future come true,’ said the kit, ‘because the future isn’t finished. The past is.’
A voice in the dark: Jimkin. ‘But can’t we change the past too, Miss Ginger, if we really want to?’
‘Philosopher ferrets say we can’
‘I want to be a philosopher ferret’ said Jimkin
Curious Lives by Richard Bach
‘What are you reading Ma?’ asked the young girl. Her mother had that dazed look she always had when she was thinking too deeply. She looked up from her book and hugged her fifteen your old. ‘Richard Bach says you can change your past. I was wondering what he meant by that…’ The frown of concentration spread from the mother to her daughter. The child replied ‘I don’t know about changing the past, but you sure can change the memory of the past!’ An excited look crossed the mother’s face ‘I was just thinking the same…’ She hugged her tight.
God: I love seeing the young ones talk with such maturity. She is right you know. What is the past but a collection of memories. If you can change that, you most certainly have changed the past.
Science: We try helping trauma patients by trying to reprogram their memories Father. People associate specific stimuli and context in groups or clusters. When that happens to be a negative reinforcement (a negative incident or repeated painful occurrences) he will always confront that stimuli from the prison of his memory. Research has revealed that people don’t just passively store impressions. Memory is a dynamic activity at the cellular level, an ongoing psychological process capable of being manipulated with drugs and therapy.
God: Drugs? Is it really that bad for some?
Science: Yes Father. When people suffer from Post Traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) like war veterans, or even those with very painful memories that begin to dominate their daily life, we find this is a disorder of learning and memory.
God: What do you mean disorder? Memory most certainly has a major role to play in man’s life! Imagine if he needed to relearn everything on a daily basis – that fire will hurt him, this spear can kill him, crossing the road needs caution…
Science: No doubt Father! Indeed for survival, certain aspects of our experience needs to be transferred to the Long term memory. When two or more neurons fire simultaneously they develop a synchronous bond that makes them fire together in future. It involves complex biochemical reactions of receptors receiving, amplifying the signal between two neurons. But these receptors are continually forming, disappearing and reforming. A memory’s persistence implies the existence of an active biochemical process that keeps a fixed component of receptors in place. Research has identified this fixed component as a protein kinase known as PKMzeta. So they found an anti-agent to this called ZIP. Experiments are on to see if we can treat PTSD patients by blocking the PKMzeta by using a more controlled version of ZIP that actually reformats the patients hard disk!
God: I understand that nothing can be more traumatic than being a prisoner within. Having to live with yourself if you have defined ‘you’ in terms of an unacceptable past, can be almost unbearable. But I am sure there must be other alternatives you can find to ‘change the past’ rather than erase the memories!
Science: We are trying to chemically modify ZIP to prevent it from entering the brain and confining it to only the spinal cord, just to treat and erase the hypersensitive reaction of the painful stimuli. You see, the reaction itself is a form of memory. So we want to stop the recall of traumatic incidents and the reaction already stored with that memory. For this we actually need a drug with the power of ZIP but with enough specificity to target only individual memories and not the entire ‘hard disk!’
God: How about ensuring that such disturbing reactions are never processed into the long term memory and instead remains only in the short term memory for immediate use and action?
Science: Roger Pitman, a neuroscientist at Harvard medical school, tried just that – alter the emotional valence associated with the trauma but not erase the memory of the trauma. Several drugs known as beta-blocker propranolol do just that and are widely used to treat hyper-tension and stage fright. Today we give people who undergo a traumatic event like a car accident, this drug immediately after the incident to help handle post-traumatic stress. But that does risk compromising the psychological integrity of the victims as it possible alters the emotional impact of the memories without altering the actual memory.
God: Do people accept an intervention through drugs to alter memory that easily?
Science: No Father! As Jerry Adler writes ‘Long after American society made peace with the idea of using drugs to alter consciousness and mood, memory, the sacred vessel of selfhood, remains off-limits to manipulation in the view of many.’ Somehow altering memory even if it is painful is not really acceptable by all because your memories actually define who you are.
God: Do you think that perhaps a liberal use of such drugs is the cause for building such an insensitive society? I know that the experiment conducted by McGaugh and Cahill showed that those given propranolol could not respond to an emotionally arousing story in a manner that others (without the drug) could. You are aware that Ivan Pavlov showed in classical conditioning that even a dog trained to salivate when the bell rings, will eventually stop salivating if the memory is not reinforced. What makes you think these painful memories do not extinguish themselves in the same way?
Science: The truth is Father that by reliving the original trauma most victims are negatively reinforcing the incident, they are keeping their response intact making it almost impossible to forget. We are trying new virtual reality experiments to reprogram the responses – exposing them to the threat they fear but in controlled reassuring contexts.
God: My dear, survival is enhanced by remembering the threat, not by forgetting it. So erasing a persons memory totally with ZIP is not the solution. Using drugs to prevent the emotional valency of a painful occurrence is also not the solution as it will only create an insensitive society incapable of feeling the pain. Every traumatic incident actually teaches you that if this is painful for you, so it is for the other. That helps teach society why they ought to ‘do unto others what you would have them do to you. Do not do unto others what you do not want them to do unto you’.
Science: I completely understand Father. But then, how do I help those locked in the memory of a painful past?
God: As Karim Nader at McGill University wrote in the year 2000, old memories can be changed when they are recalled to consciousness. Unlike a diary with a written page that cannot be altered, your computer hard disk allows you to revisit files and keep modifying them each time. Survival is stronger when you can revisit your memories, use newer experiences to distinguish and reconsolidate their emotional valency and store them with the changes for future reference. You may have been afraid of the dark when you were a child. But as you grow older, you revisit darkness in more acceptable situations that today prompt you to reassure your child. Progress, why even survival is possible not by erasing your past but by reinventing your past. My dear child, your past is no more a static phenomenon fated to be a burden you carry, but can easily become as dynamic as your future. It is learning to process your past in new changed ways that you begin to control your future choices. The past and the future are not distinct fixed entities but actually a single reality that remains dynamic in your conscious control.
‘Scars remind us where we have been, they need not dictate where we are going.’ – Author unknown
Written by Gita Krishna Raj | Published in infinithoughts in October 2012
When Science met God… | Segment Six: Lost in Time | Chapter Five: Changing your past
