We Can Now Retrieve Early (UFO?) Memories

Some people want to forget, but others want to remember, and researchers are trying to find a way for us to retrieve memories that have been lost in the fog of time. Whitley can’t forget his visit from the Master of the Key, who burst into his hotel room in Toronto in 1998 and told him all about it (The new, UNCENSORED edition of The Key, with a foreword that talks about how many of his statements later turned out to be true, is in bookstores NOW).

Many of these foggy memories may be recollections of childhood UFO contact, so retrieving these memories is especially important for a group of very special people. Now neuroscientists may have succeeded in finding a substance called PKM-zeta, an enzyme known to be active in memory storage, that brings back early memories. In the March 8th edition of the New York Times, Benedict Carey quotes neuroscientist Cristina M. Alberini as saying, "This is a substance that’s involved in the natural regulation of memory consolidation, and an injection significantly slows down forgetting."

The older we get, the more difficulty we seem to have remembering things. We can leave our cars in the same parking lot each morning, but unless we park in the same space each and every day, it’s a challenge eight hours later to recall whether we left the SUV in the second or fifth row. Or, we can be introduced to new colleagues at a meeting and will have forgotten their names before the handshake is over. We shrug and nervously reassure ourselves that our brains "hard drives" are just too full to handle the barrage of new information that comes in daily. According to neuroscientist Michael Yassa, the real trouble is that our aging brains are unable to process this information as "new" because the brain pathways leading to the hippocampus–the area of the brain that stores memories–become degraded over time. As a result, our brains cannot accurately "file" new information (like where we left the car that particular morning), and confusion results.

Carey quotes neuroscientist Jim McGaugh as saying, "The idea that an older memory can be strengthened is a novel and exciting finding, but it also raises the question: How does this work? And does it apply to ALL memories?" That’s what "contactees" want to know! (NOTE: Subscribers can listen to both these interviews with contactees–as well as to 7 others).