Tony Robbins & Chet Holmes on Business Today

Demise of Guys?

Top 10 Takeaways from the Debt Deal

Top 10 Takeaways from the Debt Deal

How to mend a broken heart

"Faced with such overwhelming evidence of human lunacy, I let go of the notion that there is, somewhere, a proper, measured response to losing love. A broken heart makes us human, and sometimes being human is a ridiculous, painful, desperate thing." ~ Shannon Service


How to mend a broken heart

Erase Painful Memories With a Pill??

Pill could erase painful memories, study shows

By Linda Carroll, msnbc.com contributor

What if you could take a pill and erase painful memories? Most of us would probably choose not to lose parts of our past, but for those with post-traumatic stress disorder, such a pill might bring welcome relief.
In a study that sounds very much like a scene from the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” researchers have shown that the right medication might actually help rub out wrenching remembrances.

For the new study, researchers rounded up 33 university students and asked them to watch a video presentation that told the story of a little girl who has a horrible accident while visiting with her grandparents. While the girl and her grandfather are constructing a birdhouse, one of the little girl’s hands gets caught in a saw. One of the pictures shown to the study volunteers is of her mangled hand.

Though the girl’s hand is eventually saved at the hospital and the story ends fine, the presentation is tough to sit through and tends to cause viewers emotional distress, explains the study’s lead author Marie-France Marin, a doctoral student at The Center for Studies on Human Stress at the University of Montreal. “It’s not fun to watch,” she says. “It induces a lot of emotion.”

Before the video, Marin had instructed the volunteers to watch and listen very carefully to the presentation. Afterwards, she and her colleagues collected saliva samples to measure levels of the stress hormone, cortisol. Then the 33 were sent on their way.

Three days later, the study volunteers were brought back in to the lab. Some were given a placebo, while the rest were given one of two doses of a drug that knocks back the amount of cortisol coursing through the body.

The theory is that cortisol is somehow involved in preserving memories, especially emotionally charged ones, Marin explains. Cut back on cortisol and maybe you’ll be able to mess with a memory -- even after it’s already been created and stashed away in the brain.

When Marin asked the volunteers to try to recall the video presentation, those who were given the cortisol-damping drug had a harder time recalling the more wrenching details. The higher the dose, the harder it was for them to remember.

Four days later the volunteers were asked to once again come back to the lab. Surprisingly, the drug’s impact on memory was still apparent: volunteers who took it still had trouble recalling the emotionally charged scenes.
Marin hopes that the study, published in the August issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, might one day help people suffering from PTSD. She suspects that, in the right setting, the drug might help diminish the power of the traumatic event that kicked off the condition. The idea is that a patient would review the event with a psychotherapist after having taken the drug.
 
One of the most intriguing findings of the study is the fact that memories aren’t quite as indelible as we like to think. Each time we review them in our minds, there seems to be a chance for editing to occur, Marin says.
And that might lead to other interesting lines of research. “It might be that we can actually change them and create false memories,” she explains. “It’s a question that should be investigated. Using this paradigm, can memories still change once they’re formed? If they can, that raises some ethical questions when it comes to legal testimony.”

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

ID Theft

Law Enforcement Update Electronic Data Security Breaches: Take A Police Report Over the last two months, Internet security breaches at public and private institutions may have compromised Texans’ names, addresses and Social Security numbers. Unfortunately, this string of online security lapses may have exposed millions of Texans’ personally identifying information – and left them vulnerable to identity thieves. As law enforcement officers know, personally identifying information – including names, Social Security numbers, and driver’s license numbers – in the hands of identity thieves can damage Texans’ credit. An identity thief may use this sensitive information to obtain credit cards and checking accounts in their victims’ names. Under the Identity Theft Enforcement and Protection Act, Texas law enforcement officers are required to create a written report whenever a person alleges that he or she is a victim of identity crime. Under Section 32.51 of the Penal Code, the venue for reporting identity crime is the city or county of residence for the victim whose identity was stolen – or any county in which the alleged offense was committed. When a person living within a law enforcement agency’s jurisdiction complains of being a victim of identity crime, a peace officer is required to take a police report and provide a copy of it to the victim. The Attorney General’s Office recommends that Texans collect as much evidence as they can for inclusion in the police report. This might include dated receipts from local merchants to show that the victim was in one place while a credit card or loan was being taken out somewhere else – or copies of forged checks that used the victim’s account number but had someone else’s name, address and telephone number. A victim’s ability to convince creditors that the debts were incurred through another person’s fraudulent activity is dependent upon the police report. The police report also allows the victim to place a credit freeze with the major credit reporting bureaus in order to prevent any additional bogus accounts from being established. Credit issuers may not deny credit to someone simply because he or she has been a victim of identity theft – as long as the victim has filed a criminal complaint of the theft. It may take the victim years to recover financially from the crime, and the process cannot begin until the police report is filed. As a member of the law enforcement community, I understand that jurisdictional boundaries make it difficult to support an investigation when the victim’s place of residence is in San Antonio and the suspect is accumulating bills in New York or California. Fortunately, the Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has the ability to assist law enforcement authorities with identity theft investigations. In cases involving multiple jurisdictions, multiple victims, and an identified suspect, the OAG’s law enforcement personnel is available to assist peace officers upon their request. Another resource the OAG offers to help Texans whose personal information has been compromised is the ID theft victim kit. The kit includes checklists, contact information, and detailed instructions that will help a victim begin the process of preventing additional financial harm. The kit includes a do-it-yourself affidavit and instructions for seeking a court order declaring that an individual is a victim of ID theft. Such an order can be very useful for a victim whose credit is burdened by debts that they did not actually incur. The ID theft victim kit is available on the OAG’s website atwww.texasattorneygeneral.gov. Filing a report with law enforcement authorities is a victim’s first line of defense in the road to recovery from identity theft.

---

You have received this email from the Office of the Attorney General because you have subscribed to this topic on our website. We do not sell our subscriber list to anyone, and do not acquire lists from third parties; we only send to persons who have subscribed themselves via our website.
You may unsubscribe from this list, review your subscriptions, or change your email address on file, by logging intohttps://www.oag.state.tx.us/listserv/login.php (your email address is your user-id).
You may also call (800-252-8011) or write: P.O. Box 12548, Austin, TX 78711-2548.
We hope that you find this system useful. Please send any concerns or comments you may have to: webmaster@oag.state.tx.us

Snaptu - a world of free apps on any phone

Snaptu - a world of free apps on any phone