Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

From the news pages of Nature, we discover that Hollywood is barely keeping ahead of the latest breakthrough in science.

Wipe out a single memory

A single, specific memory has been wiped from the brains of rats, leaving other recollections intact.

LeDoux's team also confirms the idea that a part of the brain called the amygdala is central to this process - communication between neurons in this part of the brain usually increases when a fearful memory forms, but it decreases in the treated rats. This shows that the fearful memory is actually deleted, rather than simply breaking the link between the memory and a fearful response.