London: If one is not happy with life because of unfavourable incidents of the past, researchers have now discovered that bad memories can be erased from the human brain.
Using electroshock therapy, scientists say it may be possible to get rid of specific emotional memories.
Marijn Kroes, a neuroscientist at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and his colleagues found that by strategically timing electroshock therapy bursts, they could target and disrupt patients' memory of a disturbing episode.
The technique, called electroconvulsive (ECT) or electroshock therapy, induces seizures by passing current into the brain through electrode pads placed on the scalp. Despite its sometimes negative reputation, ECT is an effective last-resort treatment for severe depression, and is used today in combination with anaesthesia and muscle relaxants.
Researchers at Radboud University performed experiment on 42 severely depressed patients who had already agreed to undergo electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
The study was also published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Patients were first asked to watch two extremely unpleasant, narrated slideshows. One told the story of a young boy who is hit and killed by a car as he walks with his mother. The other involved two sisters, one of whom is seriously assaulted and molested by an escaped convict.
After showing the slideshows researchers asked the patients to recall events from one of the slide-shows. Patients were then given ECT.
A day later, participants were asked to fill a questionnaire about the two events showed in the slide-shows.
The patients had a hazy memory of the event that they had recalled, while the unrecalled memory was still vivid.
