TRYING to cut down your drinking? Then have a false memory planted in your mind that will put you off the booze.
A team led by Dan Bernstein of the University of Washington, Seattle, has shown it can create false memories in people about their experiences with alcohol.
In Bernstein鈥檚 study, 132 people filled in questionnaires about their experiences with drinks before the age of 16 and indicated how much they had liked each. Half were then told, falsely, that their answers indicated they had been sick as a child after drinking vodka or rum. Compared with the remaining controls, these people then claimed to enjoy those drinks less, Bernstein told the Fourth International Conference on Memory, in Sydney, Australia.
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