Propranolol (Memory Loss) 60 Minutes Segment

[Tomer]

Ok. I'm not sure if this has already been posted as I am unsure of how old the segment is. Basically, doctors have been administering Propranolol to people who have suffered through horrific experiences in their life and been able to "erase" their memories, so to speak. As a result, some of the people in the blind study have been completely "cured." They no longer suffer from PTSD (EX: Woman being raped by doctor at age 12, another woman in a horrific car accident, etc.)

Can someone make me understand this....What is the chief difference between Propranolol and other anti-anxiety medication that distinguishes Propanolol from being able to achieve such early success in these trial runs? It seems quite baffling to me. I know Propanolol is used for "stage fright", hand tremors, etc, but these are all cross qualifications of anti-anxiety meds such as Xanax, Klonopin, Ativan, etc, etc. Here is the segment link posted below. Look forward to responses...

Ok...it's giving me a very difficult time trying to post the link. But if you just google "Propranolol 60 minutes", its the first link at the top of the page.

Cheers

 

[Epsilon Alpha]

In layman's terms it retards the formation and maintenance of emotional memories rather selectively, by blocking a specific adrenoreceptor in the amygdala if I remember correctly, and seeing as the "substrate" of memory decays a bit when a memory is accessed. Repeatedly accessing a memory on the stuff will speed its degradation without the "full retard" effect seen with benzo's which simply cause anterograde amnesia.

Now back to cramming for a late as fuck in the year midterm!

 

[kakti]

Curious what doses were used for this?

 

[skillet]

Sounds more like it blocks the stress response to recall of traumatic memories, so the association between the memory and physical response is weakened. It's weird that it apparently works so quickly, even on old memories, though.

 

[adder]

^ Yeah, it seemed to me similarly as I saw it's propanolol and the effects. It rather changes emotional response to certain memories. Sounds great but how is it selective? And I can imagine how long it's going to stay as off-label use even if there's enough proof to back it all up. There are so many drugs with additive positive uses but physicians must prescribe them off-label (and I saw there are problems with this when I was in Poland because National Health Fund checks everything, e.g. I had to start paying some ridiculously low price for my clonazepam after getting it for a very long time for free).

Maybe I'll get deeper into it when I've got some more spare time, this is interesting. Well, generally stuff concerning memory etc. is interesting...