Fear Not: Making Bad Memories Disappear

In a series of experiments that runs counter to the belief that bad memories are permanently with us, researchers have successfully demonstrated that painful recollections can be halted, and without the use of drugs or other invasive techniques.

Working at New York University, psychology professor Elizabeth Phelps and her colleagues have used a behavioral approach to keeping bad thoughts at bay. While we have long sought the inner workings of our fears and how to control them, this current study, whose findings are published in the journal Nature, represent the first successful use of behavioral techniques as opposed to a treatment involving medication.

As detailed by LiveScience, the experimental procedure involved the application of a mild electric shock associated with viewing a specific image (in this case, a blue square) over a variety of time intervals. The team discovered that there is a time-based plasticity to memory, and to the physiological responses that we attach to them. There is the opportunity, they determine, to redirect and reform those associations attached to a negative event so that we are not forever burdened by them upon recall.

What Phelps and her team have uncovered could have beneficial bearing on the development of new techniques for patients afflicted by a range of phobias and other psychological traumas.

Photo courtesy of Alyssa L. Miller, via Flickr