Recently released on Amazon Prime, the last series starring and produced by actress Julia Roberts is called Homecoming. We’re talking about a psychological thriller that makes the audience vibrate. The series focuses on the ever-controversial theme of scientific discoveries in the service of the armed forces. Machine.
The plot of this series appears to be based on a study published last year in the journal Current Biology. This is a survey conducted by a team from Columbia University and McGill University in the United States. This study showed that it is possible to “delete “selectively different memories stored in the same neuron.
- The series includes a total of 10 chapters of 30 minutes each and tells the story of a private research company contracted with the United States Army.
- Which has apparently opened a center where soldiers returning home after serving in the army are rehabilitated.
- They will remain detained at the centre and receive therapy.
- Which will help them resume their civilian life more naturally.
To do this, does the company hire an in-experience psychologist?Which is played by Julia Roberts, she takes over the center, but receives orders “from above. “The project is actually testing a new drug that promises to completely eliminate the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder suffered by many veterans.
Is that the psychologist? Heidi? You know, but behind that, there’s a lot more. However, I do not want to spoil the surprise and anticipate any information, so that the curious can enjoy the show and all the emotions that accompany it.
The motto that develops in the series seems to have its origins in the astonishing discoveries made about emotions and memory. The Columbia University study found a way to selectively erase memories of the same neuron. The research was carried out on Aplysia snails, a type of slug that has, at a very basic level, a neural chemistry identical to that of humans.
This discovery has opened up a whole line of research that seeks the treatment of the psychological effects caused by traumatic events.
At the chemical level, there is a difference between associative and non-associative memories, most of the information we have is emotionally neutral, other information is related to emotions and the two stimuli together form the memory or memory of an event.
Scientists have discovered that each type of memory uses a different variant of the protein kinase M, a neurotransmitter that neurons use to record memories. Well, it turns out that associative memories use the PKM API III variant and non-associative memories use another variant, the PKM I API.
The findings of this research seem to confirm that it is possible to erase the painful part of a memory while preserving the memory itself, without losing it, this is possible by applying inhibitors of the appropriate kinase variant. Is this discovery a hope for treatment?
Current psychology has tools to manage TEP, but it is not always possible to eradicate it with therapy, what research now seeks is to develop pharmacological approaches to treat TEP, so that memory is maintained without the anxiety it causes in the patient.
The series presents a scenario where this research appears to be experimenting with humans, in this case with the military most likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder: ex-combatants, the results presented by this study are fascinating, however, the series also shows the darker side of the development of this type of technique, and also its less human part.
At Homecoming, human experimentation brings the expected results to the secret agency conducting the research, but under unforeseen circumstances Unforeseen events are relatively easy to handle in the next phase of drug development, but the problem does not seem to be resolved. for people who have already tried the drug in its previous stage. People who, after all, are completely unaware of the true purpose of their “rehabilitation therapy for civilian life. “
It would be very interesting to know if scientists are now researching in this direction, using therapeutic techniques in the so-called third generation. There seems to be a lot of evidence that some of these techniques can influence the chemical balance of our brain. That is, to do the same function that would make an external drug, a research axis that seems interesting to many and that we could see results of in the near future.