BBC News

Deleting memories is simple with computers, but as the movie Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind shows, it’s still – as far as humans are concerned – the stuff of science fiction. Or is it?

Charlie Kaufman’s new film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, tells the story of Joel (Jim Carrey), who has the memory of a soured relationship erased from his brain by a slightly sinister research organisation, Lacuna Inc.

Lacuna carries out “cutting-edge, non-surgical procedures for the focused erasure of troubling memories.” It even has its own website – though anybody looking to erase the memory of a lost love or traumatic accident should bear in mind that Lacuna Inc is fictional, the website is for film promotional purposes only, and the treatment it proposes is as yet the stuff of fiction.

But American neuroscientists are currently developing “memory-management” drugs. They believe that such pills could help individuals improve their memory skills or even erase unwanted memories, such as that bad childhood experience lurking at the back of your mind.

According to Eric Kandel, a Nobel Prize-winning memory researcher at Columbia University in Manhattan, memory-improving and memory-deleting medicines may be available within five to 10 years. More than 40 drugs aimed at improving memory are currently going through clinical trials with the US Food and Drug Administration.