New Behavior Therapy 'Cancels' Bad Memories

In a new set of experiments, scientists were able to stop the recollection of harmful memories in test participants, without the use of any mind-altering drugs. The new work, in addition to promising new therapies for people trying to get past traumatizing experiences, also challenges established scientific knowledge, which holds that long-term memories, once formed and stored inside the brain, can no longer be altered or destroyed. The new work builds on previous research that sought to penetrate the deepest recesses of the mind and release us from our fears, phobias and bad memories, LiveScience reports.

But what makes the new investigation really stand out is the fact that it does not rely on a pharmacological approach to achieve that, but rather on a behavioral one. A similar conclusion was arrived at earlier this year and reported in a high-profile scientific journal, but that work was conducted on lab rats. This is the first time such groundbreaking results are obtained on humans, the group behind the study says. “This is the first study without drugs showing what we think is the permanent alteration of the memory,” New York University Psychology Professor Elizabeth Phelps, who has been the leader of the research team, explains.

She and her colleagues have also published a scientific paper detailing their findings, which appears in the December 9 issue of the respected journal Nature. They reveal in the entry that phobias could be targeted next, and that their approach could provide a permanent solution to common, unfounded fears that people have of various things, such as small animals, crowds and their own bodies. The current approach of treating phobias is exposing the patient to the feared object or creature, while in a safe environment. The drawback is that, when under stress, the phobia relapses.

The approach the team used relies on new information about how memory gets consolidated inside the brain. Previous studies have demonstrated that the long-term memories get consolidated every time the stimuli that caused them are perceived again. This basically opens a window into the memory, which remains open for a brief period of time. The group learned how to use this opening to create different associations in the mind of the patients, as in disassociate a stimulus from a fearful memory.

Full and interesting details can be found in the Nature paper. This is a study worth reading, experts say.