Drug to reduce fear ?
I have become a regular reader of 'The Future Of Things' that always contains something interesting for the Sci-Fi mind.
Today they linked to a study on a new drug called propranolol that "is usually used to control blood pressure" but has been found to have the possibility of reducing "strong fearful memories" for people suffering from traumatic events, xenophobia and so forth in a human study.
Read here in full, the article has the catchy title 'Drug banishes bad memories' which isn't really what it's about as the researchers themselves assert that one of the results was to confirm that the drug did not remove the memory itself but the fear to the object shown to the study participants (a spider). Quote: "the drug treatment didn't affect how well the participants remembered the link between the spiders and the shock. They could recall the link clearly, but the fear response had gone."
