Remember that film back in 2004 starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet where Carrey's character had memories of a bad breakup erased from his mind?
Well, it's turning into reality.
Dutch psychology professor Merel Kindt from the University of Amsterdam has reportedly found a way to remove the emotional anxiety that comes with bad memories, without entirely wiping out the memories themselves from the human brain.
The psychologist developed this method by working with people with arachnophobia, or extreme fear of spiders.
By injecting some of her subjects with a drug called propanolol, Kindt found out that individuals who were administered this drug after being exposed to a spider were later on able to handle the creatures they were earlier afraid of, without the fear.
The psychology professor believes that the drug is able to change the way a memory is stored inside the human brain after it is retrieved.
This is contrary to the existing and prevailing belief that memories are faithful recordings of our lives that are inherently ingrained in our brains, thus making them unchangeable.
It is also interesting to note that forming memories cause actual physical changes in the brain through the growth of new synaptic connections between neurons in the brains. This astounding discovery was made by Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel from Columbia University.
A new feature called "Memory Hackers," which aired on Wednesday night on PBS' "Nova," focused on scientific efforts to alter memories.
"Memory is an inherently interesting thing," the show's writer, director and producer, Michael Bicks, told The New York Post. "You think you know what it is, but when you think about it, you realise that you don't."
Bicks said efforts to discover ways to wipe out some bad memories can be beneficial for some, including those who experienced traumatic experiences.
"It might be possible to work with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], and that's a huge deal," he said. "It could happen very soon."
