Headline Jan09, 2012

''BRAIN CANDY- anyone?!!''

Let me scare the daylight out of all of you!!
It may be one hell of news to the science students that -Propranolol might be the most philosophically vexing pharmaceutical since ever.Mind you -This drug openly questions the significance of Reality. And by God, believe you me, this is really and truly wonderful. =and this is really and truly terrifying!!


Between us, here is the low down:
Understanding propranolol begins with the understanding adrenaline, specifically how adrenaline impacts memory. Try to recall the most intense moments of your life -car accidents, fistfights et cetera. In most cases, you will remember the details from those events far more vividly than less meaningful, more conventional episodes from everyday existence. This is (at least partially) the product of adrenaline; the cerebral rush of adrenaline that accompanies intense circumstances burns those memories into your brain. Adrenaline makes us remember things.


When humankind was young, this process offered a sociobiological evolutionary advantage. If Early Man got especially freaked out by a tiger attack, that hardwiring taught him to stay out of tiger country. However, Tiger's are no longer a pressing issue in Modern Man's Life.
Today, adrenaline more often makes Modern Man remember the events he'd most like to forget.
This is why we have disorders like post traumatic stress: Many people and particularly war veterans, cannot psychologically overcome the worst moments from their life; the experiences never stop seeming vivid. Adrenaline has galvanized memories they won't want to recall.
This brings then to propranolol!!


If a surplus of adrenaline makes us remember, it stands to reason that a deficit of adrenaline would help us forget And this is what propranaolol does. It inhibits the chemical rush that makes memories hyperconcrete.
It doesn't erase memories, but it makes them more abstract and less painful. In theory giving the accident victims immediate doses of propranolol could dramatically change how lucidly they remember the horror of a specific experience.

What's even crazier is the possibility of propranolol working retroactively: it appears that patients might be able to erode traumas from the distant past by ingesting the drug and self-triggering memories on purpose. That is you repeatedly take propranolol and fixate on something that happened twenty years ago -over time, that specific memory grows hazy and normative!
Amazing and Alarming!!


Many thanks to !WOW! And this startling and scary post continues.

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless