If you've ever wished your brain was more user-friendly, neurotechnology might seem like a dream come true. It's all about offering you ways to hack your brain, getting it to do more of what you want and less of what you don't want. There are "nootropics" -- also known as "smart drugs" or "cognitive enhancers" -- pills that supposedly give your brain a boost. There's neurofeedback, a tool for training yourself to regulate your brain waves; research has shown it has the potential to help people struggling with conditions like ADHD and PTSD. There's brain stimulation, which uses electric currents to directly target certain brain areas and change their behavior; it's shown promise in treating severe depression by disrupting depression-linked neural activity. Oh, and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are working on brain-computer interfaces that could pick up thoughts directly from your neurons and translate them into words in real time, which could one day allow you to control your phone or computer with just your thoughts. Some of these technologies can offer very valuable help to people who need it.

Despite their incorporeal form, memories have a way of becoming a very real part of our identity, like the pattern of freckles on your face or your favorite jacket might. Remembering a childhood friend while gazing off at a field of dandelions may be pleasant, but being sucked back into a bad memory -- a difficult breakup or a traumatizing loss -- can be unbearable. But what if, a la Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, we could simply erase those memories? It's something being explored, but Philipp Kellmeyer, a neurologist and head of the Neuroethics & A.I. Ethics Lab at the University of Freiburg, has several concerns. High among them is identity.

For people living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), erasing distressing memories is something that could only be dreamed of. But researchers believe they may have found a way of turning those dreams into reality. Scientists have pinpointed an enzyme in the brain that is critical in the storage of long-term memories. While the enzyme has only been studied in mice so far, the researchers are optimistic that it could be targeted to remove distressing memories in people with PTSD in the future. The enzyme, called acetyl-CoA synthetase 2, or ACSS2 'fuels' gene expression in the nucleus of nerve cells to turn on key memory genes after learning.

Memories of bad events are painful to think about by their very nature, and traumatic events can often seem worse than they really were when you relive them. This is because we are less likely to remember the context surrounding a bad experience, only the experience itself, according to research out today. The findings could help explain why some therapies for conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder work and might lead to new way to treat sufferers. Memories of bad events are painful to think about by their very nature, and traumatic events can often seem worse than they really were when you relive them. A research group at University College London placed 20 volunteers in an MRI scanner and showed them pairs of pictures, some of which included negative content.