hey, gosh there is the most awesome series on Showtime I think. Every episode just blows me away. Its called "This American Life". this weeks episode is called Pandoras Box. (they were the ones who had the episode about Chance, the cloned bull, remember?) anyway, this epidsode has on there where this scientist has actually isolated a chemical in the brain that of blocked, blocks ALL memory in rats. ALL memory. So he had rats where they would avoid an area where they would receive a shock, would not go near it, block the memory chemical in teh brain and they would go back to the area they had known before would shock them. When it was reported on the news after the study was published, there was a startling number of responses from people begging them to test it on them, some saying they had experienced a life event so horrible and traumartizing that it had ruined their entire lives and how they would give anything to erase it. The researcher actually started crying when he read one email, it so touched him.
And gosh its just fascinating to imagine, would we even be the same PERSON if we had no memory? Of our first date, our first heartbreak, not being asked to the prom, never falling on our rear in front of everyone at that wedding reception etc. and then i thought of shut down abused horses, or horses so terrified of humans or traumatized by an event, how if wiped clean would they be a different animal. Because so many unresolvable behavior problems, I would say almost all of them, are from bad experiences. What if they could be erased?? it is fascinating to think of. Janice -- yipie tie yie yo
