Methylene blue is a chemical that has been used an antidote for cyanide poisoning. There have been suggestions over the years that it may have an effect on memory. A paper titled “Multimodal Randomized Functional MR Imaging of the Effects of Methylene Blue in the Human Brain,” was recently published in the journal Radiology. Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate a copy of the original paper, so I am forced to rely on this account in ScienceDaily:
“A single oral dose of methylene blue results in an increased MRI-based response in brain areas that control short-term memory and attention, according to a new study. Methylene blue was associated with a 7 percent increase in correct responses during memory retrieval.”
Several media outlets report that methylene blue was shown to improve short term memory. This is one of the reasons I need to see the original paper. The phrase “short term memory” is used differently by psychologists than the general public. Indeed, many psychologists have abandoned the phrase altogether and, instead, talk about working-memory. When non-academics talk about short term memory they mean things like forgetting a phone number or someone’s name. In fact, most of these are failures of attention or long term memory, not problems with short term memory. Thus, I worry that reporting on this research may be very misleading.
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