Closet

"I've never known anybody who didn't have a skeleton or two in their closet," writes Robert Fulghum, noting that there are always those things we don't want to talk to anybody about.

It is true that all of us have a few demons being locked somewhere in a closet or drawer. Fulghum, the American author who wrote All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, explains that shame, guilt, and embarrassment are the locks on the closet door. I have long been wishing for a secret recipe to erase the demons, and I have always felt it to be just as well for me to clean up the lockers other than mine - I'm responsible for at least dozens of demons hiding in others' closets.

It's not hard to understand my excitement when I read about a memory molecule that appears in a recent edition of the scientific journal Nature. Researchers have discovered ways to manipulate a protein in the rats' hippocampus to enhance or diminish memory. This means that the scientists are able to deliver electric shocks to rats on entering a particular entrance to a box, but then erase their bitter memories of the shock.

Another way of making sense of the science is to develop a novel target for cognitive enhancement therapy. If you want people to keep remembering a story, you can. The question remains: Do we?