Fear research has important applications to trauma stress syndrome. Consequently, it has important applications to returning Vets, catastrophe victims, accident victims and crime victims, especially victims of childhood abuses. Recent years have seen significant breakthroughs, so much so that it can now be said by science that newly formed fear can be removed from the human brain. This is a research breakthrough of remarkable proportions. A number of studies have built upon each others’ work. A significant groundbreaking study on the amygdala was in the forefront.
In 2008, Dr Louise Faber’s neuroscience research group at The University of Queensland uncovered the role noradrenaline (adrenaline equivalent for the brain) plays in implanting memories in the amygdala. This area processes emotions, especially strong ones like fear and anxiety, that can result in deep trauma. Strong memories are associated with strong emotions, from rage to fear to love, according to Faber. Noradrenaline controls both chemical and electrical pathways that implant memories in the amygdala, and this control also later affects the transition to long-term emotional memories from implanted short-term emotional memories. As Faber put is: “This is a new way of understanding how neurons form long-term memories in the amygdala.”
In 2009, Merel Kindt’s team of Dutch researchers found a way to interrupt this process that transitions short-term memories to stable long-term memories. As a result, they were able to remove newly formed fear-associated memories from human brains. Recall that strong emotions, like fear, implant strong amygdala governed and noradrenaline controlled memories. Kindt’s team demonstrated with volunteer human subjects that the protein synthesis that moves memories from short-term to long-term during the labile transition phase can be interrupted.
The labile phase, initially occurring at short-term memory implantation, reoccurs when short-term memories are retrieved, or recalled. When the protein synthesis during this labile phase is interrupted, following the administration of propranolol just prior to retrieval, the fear memory is neutralized and removed from the brain. Propranolol is a beta-blocker that affects heart rate and circulation. To determine the effect of propranolol on fear memories, the study used electrodes to measure the eye-blinking response in volunteers. This is a response directly related to fear reactions and, equally importantly, directly triggered by the amygdala, where noradrenaline produces the chemical and electrical pathways that implant then retrieve short-term strong emotional memories.
In 2012, Uppsala University’s doctoral candidate, Thomas Ågren, with supervisors, Mats Fredrikson and Tomas Furmark, proved that repeated exposure to the fear inducing object during the labile retrieval-reconsolidation phase also removes the fear response and the fear memory from the amygdala emotion center. Their study confirms that memory content can be affected during the amygdala’s protein synthesis labile retrieval-reconsolidation phase. They also confirm that the affect of an interruption is to remove newly formed fear memories.
These results were first confirmed in 2009 by researchers at New York University who applied classical fear training and subsequent fear extinction training to “rewrite” a newly formed fear memory as “safe.” The study measured the fear response in human volunteers a day after and again a year after fear extinction training. They confirmed that the fear response had been and remained rewritten by the incorporation new “safe” information into the memory as a result of interrupting the retrieval-reconsolidation labile phase of the noradrenaline controlled chemical and electrical pathways in the brain’s emotion center, the amygdala.
Sources:
“New understanding of how we remember traumatic events.” QBI Communications. 27 October 2008.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-10/ra-nuo102708.php
Merel Kindt. “An end to fear.” Nature Neuroscience, Advance Online Publication. 15 February 2009.
http://www.nwo.nl/nwohome.nsf/pages/NWOA_7PBBGN_Eng
Thomas Ågren. “Fear can be erased from the brain.” Uppsala University. 2012.
http://www.uu.se/en/news/news-document/?id=1756&area;=2,3,10,16&typ;=pm&na;=〈=en
“Noninvasive Technique to Rewrite Fear Memories Developed.” ScienceDaily.com. Reprinted from materials provided by New York University. New York University. December 10 2009.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091209134629.htm
Sibling rivalry presents its ugly head in many households with more than one kid. This…
Often people who work outdoors will look into the mirror to find a small area…
We all learned about the Lewis and Clark expedition in school. As you probably know,…
I have shared my life with two cats for many years. Living in a small…
If you're like most American high school students, the subject of college admissions is often…
Every day there are stories about somebody keeling over from a sudden heart attack, a…
This website uses cookies.