Bad Memories? Scientists Say They Could Be Erased!

I Am Sceptical! But I Believe The Research Is Worth Following
A team from Lund University in Sweden using EEG brain scans to study the brain have produced some interesting provisional findings. Their claim is that it is possible for a person to have a selective memory. With that would come the ability to screen out memories for a sufficient period of time for them then to be forgotten completely.
The thrust of their claim is that tests on volunteers who took part allowed the team to detect the moment a memory was apparently forgotten, and that it was possible that by burying the memory for long enough it could be permanently erased from the brain.
The author of the study, Gerd Waldhauser, admitted however that aiding the forgetting of a traumatic event would be a more complex task. He does believe though that if memories have been buried long enough they could be very difficult to retrieve and the more often that a particular memory is suppressed, the more irrecoverable it may become.
For anyone with traumatic emotional memories wanting to take this information literally, I would urge them to exercise caution. It still seems to me that the brain's ability to respond immediately when faced with a dramatic event unfolding in front of us remains unchallenged. What happens is that our brain instinctively conducts its own memory scan, trawling for any relevant memory which could help us in any way to decide what to do in the face of the current challenge.
I would rate the chance very high that it would not matter how much we have tried to suppress an unpleasant memory and even seemingly forgotten it - or whether we had seemingly screened it out successfully to achieve the same apparent effect. Faced with a sudden threat or event, our automatic brain scan could still unearth it from the deepest parts of our sub-conscious, given its relevance to our current predicament.
So I would also say that if this scientific study is to help those who have undergone traumatic experiences, then counsel them first to deactivate and defuse the most toxic parts of their memories. Only then with the memories reframed help them to bury those images, so if ever the brain still succeeds and instinctive recall of the past event does take place, its impact on them is likely to much reduced.
Failure to do that would leave them vulnerable to suffering from the hideous mental and emotional recall of their original trauma on any coincidental re-occurrence..
Also, if all manner of behavioural strategies were adopted naively after the first experience in order to protect future feelings, they will remain in the brain to act as a continuing  inhibitor even if the actual event causing them has been forgotten. Only by personal or professional review could these be neutralized.

Let’s keep an eye out for the further research, but not behave as if we can be spared the hurt of our worst memories, certainly for the time being.

Gerry Neale
Author of "Squaring Circles: From The Dark Into The Light"
A Novel of Self Discovery