Fascinating bit on rewriting bad memories before re-storing them in the brain
Thursday, May 7, 2009 at 3:10AM HEALTH FOR LIFE: "To Pluck a Rooted Sorrow: Can painful, unwanted memories be altered or even eradicated?" by Claudia Kalk, Newsweek, 27 April 2009.
Memories get written to the brain like files are stored on a computer. Short-term memory is like RAM: "it records the information in front of you right now." If you shut down, a lot will be lost.
But other short-term memories go through a molecular process called consolidation: they're downloaded onto the hard drive. These long-term memories filled with past loves and losses and fears stay dormant until you call them up. Here's where the brain is truly ingenious: when events are supercritical or meaningful or scary--a first kiss, a baby's birth, a bike accident--stress hormones alert the amygdala, the brain's emotional control center, which then ramps up the memory processing machinery, etching that particular event more deeply.
All sounds logical and unsurprising.
Here's the kicker:
But the unwanted memories of rapes and robberies and combat can disrupt people's lives and, in some cases, lead to lifelong struggles . . . Antidepressants help relieve the symptoms, but fearful recollections often persist. Many patients receive cognitive behavioral therapy, which encourages them to confront their experiences in a safe way . . . The treatment doesn't get rid of the old memory; instead, patients form a new, competing memory of the event--I can stand at this corner and not get hit--that isn't nearly as toxic.
But such therapy is successful only about half the time.
In steps Karim Nader, who has tested (on rats) the idea that when a bad memory is called up, "it can be altered and then it is stored again. The original memory? No longer there."
Pretty radical stuff. He uses a drug that stops protein synthesis in the amylgdala.
This would be a powerful capacity, equally beneficial and dangerous, but you can see the real relief it could bring to people who've suffered a lot of trauma--real inner peace following the war.
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