Hey, remember that movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? The one where Jim Carrey wanted to get the memory of his relationship with Kate Winslet erased, and then things went…awry? Here’s a refresher.

Why do I mention this? Well, because scientists think they may be close to doing something semi-similar.

Suppose scientists could erase certain memories by tinkering with a single substance in the brain. Could make you forget a chronic fear, a traumatic loss, even a bad habit. Researchers in Brooklyn have recently accomplished comparable feats, with a single dose of an experimental drug delivered to areas of the brain critical for holding specific types of memory, like emotional associations, spatial knowledge or motor skills. [New York Times]

Obviously, this is all a long ways off. And it seems pretty clear that, unlike Eternal Sunshine, people probably won’t be able to ask for specific memories to be erased, but specific types. However, even if that’s the case, it brings up the very interesting (at least I think) notion that a person’s narrative of his/her life will be completely different than how others conceive of that person. And not only because of the literal and cognitive gap between people, but because other people would empirically know things about that person’s life, and shape their view of them in that light, while the person will have lost those facts, and perhaps build a different value structure for him- or herself than he or she would have otherwise.

For example, let’s say I wanted to remove all memories of bad relationships. Those relationships have, most likely, both taught me things about myself that I include in my values and how I choose to live my life, as well as informed other people about how I live my life, and my values. Now, if I removed those memories, my value structure would be different than how it was created, and would no longer align with how others have seen me build my narrative, to borrow a term from feminist ethics.

Or something like that. takepart with the National Institute of Health to see what other research is going on out there.