Day: September 21, 2012

Do not look into the light … they are messing with your mind!

The fear factor: Researchers discovery technique to erase newly formed memories

  • Researchers claim to be able to erase newly formed emotional memories
  • Breakthrough could lead to new treatments for phobias and post traumatic stress

Erasing memories has long been a staple of sci-fi films, but researchers now believe they have made a breakthrough in making the process reality.

The groundbreaking research at Uppsala University in Sweden could lead to radical new treatments for sufferers of anxiety and post traumatic stress disorders.

It shows for the first time that newly formed emotional memories can be erased from the human brain.

This is shown by researchers from Uppsala University in a new study now being published by the academic journal Science.

‘These findings may be a breakthrough in research on memory and fear. Ultimately the new findings may lead to improved treatment methods for the millions of people in the world who suffer from anxiety issues like phobias, post-traumatic stress, and panic attacks,’ says Thomas Ă…gren, who led the study.

When a person learns something, a lasting long-term memory is created with the aid of a process of consolidation, which is based on the formation of proteins in the brain.

When we remember something, the memory becomes unstable for a while and is then restabilized by another consolidation process.

‘In other words, it can be said that we are not remembering what originally happened, but rather what we remembered the last time we thought about what happened,’ the researchers say.

By disrupting the reconsolidation process, the team found they can change what was remembered.

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