An FDA-approved asthma drug some are calling ‘magic’ has shown the ability to restore lost memories and reveal previously hidden knowledge.

A similar recovery of seemingly inaccessible memories was also demonstrated using optogenetic therapy, but the relatively safe drug is non-invasive and equally successful. If proven effective, this novel approach could offer a new ray of hope for millions suffering from conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s, or simply help everyday people remember critical elements of their lives lost to the passage of time.

Restoring Memories More Fiction than Fact

In TV and the movies, lost memories can sometimes be retrieved using hypnosis (dubbed hypnotic regression) or via other therapeutic methods like revisiting a specific location or even exposure to a familiar stimulus. In real life, most of these methods can offer some measure of hope, but more often than not lost memories simply remain lost.

Now a team of researchers from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands has zeroed in on the relationship between learning while sleep deprived and the difficulties in retrieving that knowledge to unlock the door to all of the lost memories and hidden knowledge that still remains stored within our brains. And based on their initial findings, a safe and simple asthma drug that is already in use may hold the key.

Asthma Drug Equals Optogenetic Stimulation to Retrieve Lost Memories

“Sleep deprivation undermines memory processes, but every student knows that an answer that eluded them during the exam might pop up hours afterward,” explains University of Groningen neuroscientist Robbert Havekes. “In that case, the information was, in fact, stored in the brain, but just difficult to retrieve.”

This duality motivated Havekes and his associates to see if they could replicate learning something specific, and then use two different approaches to retrieve that memory when it doesn’t come back on its own.

First, they genetically engineered