Heart Drug Beta-Blockers May Wipe Out Bad Memories

Research by Dutch scientists has led them to believe that common heart condition drugs known as beta-blockers may be capable of erasing bad memories from the brain.

According to respected scientific journal Nature Neuroscience and scientists believe that the drug is capable of changing the way in which we file and retrieve memories in our brains.

The research team created fake bad memories for volunteers making use of photos of spiders linked to delivering a mild electric shock.

The volunteers were then split into two separate groups 50% of which were given propranolol, a common brand name beta blocker.

The other half of the volunteers were given a placebo, they were then shown the same images of spiders and making use of what is known as the “startle response” they assessed how afraid each person was of the image.

They found that the beta blocker group were considerably less fearful than the other group. After 24 hours the beta blocker left their system and the experiment was tried again.

This time despite the lack of the drug in the bloodstream the beta-blocker group was still not as fearful of the images as the placebo group.

This leads the sciences to theorize that the beta-blocker had eliminated or failed to retrieve the bad memories related to the images and the electric shocks.