Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
dividual, around which mood fluctuates. Braun reviews the work on rats
and humans in this area by researchers in Canada and at the Universities of
Wisconsin and Colorado. evidence indicates that happiness is an emergent
property of biological properties of the brain, including epigenetic factors.
7
Ultimately, knowledge about brain function will allow pharmaceutics re-
searchers to design drugs that can regulate a person's happiness set point in
more nuanced ways than currently used antidepressants influence mood.
Although the origin of individual happiness set points is not yet fully un-
derstood, it seems prudent to assume that in the foreseeable future phar-
maceutical companies will be offering a new generation of mood enhanc-
ers that will allow persons to feel good most of the time.
memory-enhancing and memory-erasing drugs are also on the near
horizon.
8
initially, memory enhancers will probably be used therapeuti-
cally for victims of Alzheimer's disease and non-pathological age-related
memory loss. eventually, they will undoubtedly become cosmetic pharma-
ceuticals used by anybody wishing to increase his or her memory abilities.
An example of a memory-erasing drug is propanolol, an agent already used
to treat high blood pressure and heart disease. Propanolol can also dull the
memory of a traumatic event if taken within a few hours of the event. it
and similar drugs will also probably be used therapeutically at first, for vic-
tims of rape and other violent crimes, for soldiers in order to ward off post-
traumatic stress disorder, and for patients in certain emergency room situa-
tions. Propanolol does nothing to erase memories of long past events, such
as abuse in childhood. But ongoing research aims to develop drugs that may
ultimately make it possible to selectively erase memories from long ago.
Drugs to enhance learning are also coming. This became apparent nearly
a decade ago when Tim Tully, a neuroscientist at Cold spring harbor labo-
ratory in new york, reviewed scientists' progress in this area (Tully et al.
2003). for example, Tully found that using certain drugs to increase the
activity of a protein called CreB dramatically improves the learning abili-
ties in learning-impaired mice.
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moreover, the drugs also reverse cogni-
tive defects in mice with genetic disorders analogous to human Down syn-
drome, fragile X syndrome, and neurofibromatosis.10
10
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