Implanting false memories of bad booze experiences make rum revolting

Times of India
Jul. 23, 2006

SYDNEY: Implanting false memories of a bad experience with alcohol could prevent people abusing alcohol later, a Canadian researcher has said.

Dan Bernstein from Kwantlen University College, showed if people are led to believe they once drank themselves sick, it can affect their taste for a particular drink. He presented the research, conducted at the International Conference on Memory in Sydney.

In the study, 142 people aged 18-20 were told they had had a bad past experience with alcoholic drinks. "We wanted to know if there were consequences to false memory and we looked at whether we could increase people's confidence that they got sick drinking rum some time in their past," Bernstein said.

"What we find is that if you've increased your confidence that you've got sick drinking rum, you now give rum less preference."

Rewriting the past

Participants' memories were manipulated by telling them that a computer had generated a personal profile based on a questionnaire about past eating and drinking habits. They were told they had become sick on rum in the past and they were asked to elaborate on that experience.

About a quarter of the participants became more confident they had actually been sick on rum. "Between 30 and 40% increased their confidence for the item in comparison to a control group," he says. When asked to rate how much they liked rum they rated it less than before their memories were manipulated.

Ethical issues

Mike Toglia, a US expert in false memories from the State University of New York, who wasn't involved in the research, says Bernstein's work offers a new application for this field of memory research. He acknowledges there are ethical issues about brainwashing.

"There's always been the concern that implanting false memories is a form of brainwashing and some people believe that maybe this kind or research should be stopped for that reason," he says. "But I think the good can outweigh the risks."

Beating obesity

Manipulating memory could also be used to prevent overeating, Bernstein saud. But prior bad experiences don't create an aversion to all foods and drinks, only those with a distinct or unusual flavour.

"With some drinks and some food you may have got sick but it doesn't seem to have this imprint, this lasting effect," he says.

He said his previous research managed to induce an aversion to strawberry ice cream, but didn't work when it came to chips. "We couldn't turn them off potato chips, we got a little rebound and they thought 'give me more!'"