Thread: Is self-induced brain damage possible?

i'm going to go with a no on this one. I'm going to try the best i can without sounding like i dont know anything, which i dont really.

i believe that there are nerves or whatever in your brain that records your memory and whatnot. The only way to perminatneyly(yeah way off i know) forget a memory is to either destroy that nerve or severely damage it. Now you can't go and decide that you want your body to destroy those nerves and the only way to get rid of them is using some external influence(i.e banging head, pills, pixie dust etc.). so thats why you can't just "want" to forget that memory for forever

i agree with nightowl
The memory bank is virtually untouchable by the mind alone, maybe some drugs, but they would wipe entire memory blocks, not just some memories.

Hhm. Ok I don't know how the brain works either, but either way... I do know that the body is able to damage itself. For example, many people have had dreams where they get hurt in the dream and their body actually damages itself in whatever area they were hurt in. If its a bunch of "nerves" like you said...nerves can be stimulated, and if they were to be overstimulated I'd assume that they'd have some sort of "breaking point" or something?

[Edit: And nightowl, I love your signature. Did you take that photo yourself?]

Dylan

I've wondered that exact same thing... Since we can pull up "repressed" or buried memories, I'm assuming the opposite (burying them deeper than they were before) can also be done... That's a good question though. I've had some lucid dreams where I become so intensely involved that I've woken up with headaches -usually due to extreme concentration or "battles" where I can feel the fluid in my brain and in my spinal cord moving or circulating... kinda freaky. I don't know about causing brain damage, but I would suppose it's possible. Ithink it's been asked before on the forum somewhere, but does anyone know of any good studies done or being done on the physical effects or side effects of LDing?

Burying memories deeper into your mind because your subcouncious can't deal with it seems possible, buts it's always there, but your brain can forget things it doesn't need, and if you look at the power of the human mind and body, some people can actually slow their heart, and buddhists reaching enlightment I imagine were like, going into OBEs and LDing or whatever when they meditated, plus people who can through meditation stand on a little box so their feet dont get wed, in a tub of ice cubes covered to their neck, keep their body at 98.6 unvarying through meditation and breathing techniques. So if you had the kind of control over your mind that monks spend 70 or 80 years to achieve to a certain level, you might just be able to erase memories you determined that your mind didn't need. Makes you think huh?

I dont have any expertise but doesnt the brain have a limited amount of space for memory, Doesn't it fill up and that is why as you get older you lose your old memories or are they just unaccessable then. I think you could definetly drive yourself crazy if you are unstable to begin with and spend too much time inside your head. I think thats why hypnotists warn against people with mental or neurological disorders to take caution.

Nightowl has a good point, that is basically how long term memory works. You can not really forget your long term memories. But, you can make it harder to retrieve them by not accessing them or physical damage. I think there are ways to block access to certain memories, but maybe not through dreams.

I didn't necessarily mean through dreams. That was only an example I used. I meant through any inner, mental way. Obviously consciously saying "i will forget this memory now" would be insanely hard if even possible at all. Because not only would you have to forget the memory, but also the memory of forgetting.

Destroying a memory is different than forgetting though. I guess it is possible because people have told me things that happened or that I did, which will cause me to think "hold on a sec, I don't remember doing that". But is it possible to will yourself to erase memories... probably not.

I wonder, how memories are stored... cells and nerves and all that are constantly dying amd being replaced with new ones, how do the memories remain? And how does the brain choose which memories to completely WIPE OUT as opposed to forget about? Perhaps it doesn't choose, and those memories merely get lost, or die.

Interesting stuff. I must say.

Dylan

Makes me wish I was a scientist instead of a bum.

hypnosis.

Originally posted by adidas+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(adidas)</div>

hypnosis.[/b]

I was just gonna say that.

But I guess hypnosis could also reverse it if you decided to go through with it.

Nevertheless, hypnosis should be enough to wipe the memory from your consciousness so that you could go about your business and not remember whatever it is you're trying to forget.

But would you still dream about it????

<!--QuoteBegin-fersteger
Makes me wish I was a scientist instead of a bum.

haha!

Originally posted by Dylan
Destroying a memory is different than forgetting though.

I was actually meaning erasing the memory permanently, as opposed to just shoving it somewhere deep in your mind and forgetting it.

Dylan

I believe that it is indeed possible, though, I don't believe that it would happen without the dreamer having the will too. I don't think that you can erase a memory completely though, as someone had said above me I'm sure. It or they would still be locked away somewhere within the mind, which I suppose would be just the same as erasing it. Because you would never know it happened, therefore, it doesn't bother you anymore. I'm sure certain tactics could be invented to accomplish this, but you would have to have someone with you to test it. You could tell the person something that you're trying to forget, so the next day, they will tell you the memory. If you don't remember anything about it, it worked. Bleh, I ramble on to much.

I know elderly people who seem to have gotten sharper with age (not normal, I know) and some who, though in their 70s and 80s, are able to function mentally and emotionally better than youngers. I think that we put ourselves in self-fulfillment of the reality that society and culture proposes to us (what we perceive to be true about aging, we MAKE true through our attitudes and perception of life): You're old, therefore you cannot or are not able, therefore DO NOT. You're old, therefore you are less vital, so DON'T TRY. Sad but true especially in western cultures. I think it's possible to submerge memories deep into the subconscious to the extent that they become "irretrievable" (even through hypnosis), but without physical damage, I wouldn't think truly erasing memories would be possible. I also believe that memories and the working of the mind have not entirely to do with the physical gray matter, but also "occur" in "places" outside of or not dependent on physical reality - in what is only described as spiritual realms or alternate realities.

Well, "brain damage" usually means something physical happening to your brain, so I don't think you could do that by will alone. Unless rolling out of bed in your sleep counts, cause I've done that . But there have been cases of people having serious personality alterations through the use (or rather, abuse) of hypnosis and related techniques. But whether they're creating those problems or just bringing them up to the surface through those techniques isn't clear.

There have been cases where hypnosis actually creates "false memories". Not sure where I read that now...

Still, I can't say yes or no to this, because if I have actually forgot a memory, I won't remember forgetting it/know I forgot it. Or would I?

Interestng topic. Follows the same lines as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind. Even if you forgot a memory, certain places would cause you to retrieve certain feelings. Say you wanted to forget a fight you had in the park with a girl/boy friend that ultimatly led to a break up. The park would always hold some sort of meaning for you. You just wouldn't remember what. Also if you only erased that one memory, you'd have a chain of memories with no ending. You'd wonder what happened to that boy/girl and if that memorywas repressed it would come back, or if it was gone, make you go insane maybe. You'd be bothered by what happened. If you want to forget one thing, you'd have to forget a chain of things.

I dunno, just thoughts I guess.

my say would be ''memory cant be just deleted just like that its far more complicated ..u can go as far as suppressing it thats how good it gets..but u will always stumble upon it no matter what u do..either through some smell that assosiactes with the event or a word or a gesture some one did or anything else

and no hynosis doesnt work like that..u can never be brainwashed ...the subconcious mind can be suggested not submissive u can never ask someone to do anything agaisnt thier will under hypnosis or against thier beliefs..they will usally wake up...u can suggest they do something but theres no 100 sure they will do it

Kaniaz wrote

There have been cases where hypnosis actually creates \"false memories\". Not sure where I read that now... *
[/b]

I read something about that in Carl Sagans "The Demon Haunted World" (an excellent book for anyone interested in superstition, by the way) there was a case in the 80s' (I think) where a man was accused by his daughter of forcing her to engage in santanic sacrifice rituals. He didn't remember any of it (because in reality it hadn't happened, the daughter made it up) but he was encouraged to undergo hypnosis because it was thought the memories might have been "repressed".

Soon after the therapy began he began to "remember" just what they wanted him to and actually "confessed" to the crime his false memories were so vivid. Only evidence that proved the daughters guilt saved him from prison.

None of this is new of course. Jung urged psychologists to stop using hypnosis because of things like that, and interragators looking for "thought criminals" in fascist countries have known about the phenomenon for years, using it to get innocent people to "confess" to crimes against the state. Scary when you think about it really.

shock can shut off whole memories completley. I suppose if you were that focused on forgetting something, it could happen. You can even recreate your past and have it as a "memory" even though it never happened. Later on, certain situations can dig these up (meditation, hypnosis, drugs, LDing, physical shock, whatever.)

My 2 c.............

The cognitive process of a memory is really nothing more than a catalog of electrical impulses. Every thing that happens in life creates a stimulus in any of our 5 senses. It is these stimuli relayed by our nerves to our brains that are what we catalog and keep as memories. The paths that these electrical impulses take is what we associate as a memory. You touch a towel, and your eyes send the visual stimulus (reflections of light) and the hands send the tactile stimulus. If you never touched a towel again for 10 years, the familiarity of the feeling would fade since the combination of stimuli and the that exact path has not been used in so long. There is a part of the brain, the parahippocampal gyrus, and its job is to recognize and assign familiarity. When it is working properly it is what tells us "you have done this before." We then take this positive familiarity result and compare it to our memories stored in the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus proper. When the memory is there and the parahippocampal gyrus says the stimulus is familiar, you have a memory with recollection.

All that to say, no... you cannot erase a memory. The subconcious buries it and may make it hard to find but it is in there. Your brain messes up sometimes and you get deja vu occurences, but these are really attributed to small electrical seizures in the parahippocampal gyrus. If the parahippocampal gyrus does not give you the positive association of the stimulus, then the memory could be lost, but never erased. Hypnosis, drugs, meditation, sleeping, and all the like change the way your electral impulses in the brain are sent. In essence, your brain works a little differently. It is in these periods that you may be able to find lost memories (regenerate damaged neuro pathways etc), but I doubt you could find something and then erase it.

fersteger asked earlier that your brain only has so much space to work with, and thats not really true. In day to dayoccurances the brain has a logic factor that decides how detailed the storage of the memory will be. If not managed, we would not remember what we are being taught in school (if it was something we found boring). We can manually overide the logic process that wants us to discard the things that we are not interested in, hence why studying is one way most people retain information. Now, in the case of getting older, you can compare it to things wearing out. Our bodies cannot repair itself indefinitely, so eventually nerve paths become damaged, or too worn, neurons stop firing properly, chemcial sythesis is less effective and the chemical pathology of the nervous system is hampered. All that leads to senility, etc.

There is not a true deletion component of the brain since, besides all of its other roles, it is very advanced storage device. There are protective dissassociative componenets, but that is a whole other topic.

whewh....

well...guess that bout somes it up...