Drug addiction is a nasty thing and getting rid of this addiction is a herculean task for those who are neck deep in this addiction and in this line Methamphetamine is the nastiest one to overcome the reason being the powerful nature of memories created during a Methamphetamine high. Wouldn’t it be bliss if those memories could be erased? Then the drug developed at the University of Florida can be named bliss as it does just that…… erases the memories! To develop this drug called Blebbistatin, or Blebb, the researchers had to understand the difference between how are brain creates memories under normal conditions and under the effect of a drug.

Memories that are normally created in our mind or “normal memories” like the first day of your school or your favourite vacation, reside in our brains as a connection of neurons supported by a protein named as ‘actin’. The actin stabilizes and the memory is stored or saved in your brain. But in the case of memories created by the drug amphetamine, the actin never stabilizes itself. The researchers wanted to take advantage of this instability and so they did by creating drug that could disrupt the actin as well as the memory. However when they considered that disrupting actin (which also makes the muscles work and heart contract) can prove to be dangerous too, they utilized another molecule called nonmuscle myocin IIB that helps actin work but doesn’t interfere with the ususal muscle and heart related functions. So what Blebb actually does is, it disrupts non muscle myocin IIB interrupting the unstable actin and erases the memory associated with the psychoactive drug. According to the researchers, with a single dose the memory associated with the drug can be disrupted for 30 days.

Right now it does seem to be a risky and dangerous concept and since it has just been tried on mice, it may not sound convincing if used in the cases of human. Years of research would be needed in this direction. But if it conquers all the negatives and comes out victorious, drug addicts struggling to go back to their normal life may finally have a great solution.

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Author:Technology Blog