«If dexamethasone works well in humans, we could potentially use it to prevent
fearful memories in soldiers on the battlefield, patients in emergency rooms, or anywhere else where healthcare providers provide treatment within hours of traumatic events.»
«These drugs, together with alcohol, may affect the ability to let go of
fearful memories in different ways.»
«Alcohol prevents ability to extinguish
fearful memories in mice: Insight into cellular mechanisms illuminates biological target for PTSD therapy.»
Not exact matches
The research, described at a news briefing during the 2017 AAAS Annual Meeting, suggests,
in principle, that scientists may someday be able to erase
fearful memories associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or disordered
memories associated with drug use.
As the animals learned, the researchers recorded electrical signals from individual neurons
in the amygdala, a brain structure that forms
memories of
fearful experiences.
«It's very interesting work but not practical for clinical treatment of patients,» says Denis Paré, a neuroscientist at Rutgers University
in New Jersey who is also studying pharmacological approaches to manipulating
fearful memories.
Some scientists might explore how and why the neural circuits that detect threats and store
fearful memories sometimes behave
in unusual ways after traumatic events — the kinds of changes that are partially responsible for post-traumatic stress disorder.
«If the effects of alcohol on
memories to
fearful responses are similar
in humans to what we observe
in mice, then it seems that our work helps us better understand how traumatic
memories form and how to target better therapies for people
in therapy for PTSD.
Experiments
in mice by researchers at Johns Hopkins suggest that if the goal is to ease or extinguish
fearful emotional
memories like those associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, alcohol may make things worse, not better.
«Extinction of
fearful memories and extinction of drug - seeking
memories relies on the same substrate
in the brain.
Now, though, at the very moment
in which a rat remembered the shock, the scientists injected an antibiotic that inhibits the synthesis of new proteins into its amygdala — a part of the brain long known to store lasting
memories of
fearful experiences.
Specifically, the findings explain how a particular gene — called fkbp5 — is involved
in a phenomenon known as «fear extinction,» through which animals and humans disassociate with
fearful memories of a traumatic experience, such as war, assault or a natural disaster.
They found that dexamethasone, a widely prescribed steroid for inflammatory conditions, affects the expression of fkbp5
in the brain, preventing the formation of the
fearful memories that are the hallmark of PTSD.
They found that while the mice could not recall those
memories in response to natural cues, such as being placed
in the cage where a
fearful event took place, the
memories were still there and could be artificially retrieved using a technique known as optogenetics.
However, the mice did freeze when the
memory cells were activated with laser light while the animals were
in a cage that should not have had any
fearful associations.
«Turning down the brain to erase
fearful memories: Weakening communication between two parts of the brain
in mice reduced their fear levels.»
«Much of extinction training — the process of learning that a
fearful cue is no longer
fearful —
in adult rodents closely parallels aspects of exposure - based psychotherapy for humans, where an exposure to a stimulus that was associated with trauma shares many aspects of the initial traumatic
memories.»
Pointing to the change
in amygdala activity, which is central to the brain's system of storing and recalling
fearful memories (see How Fear Works to learn about this process), the researchers say the
memory was not simply disconnected from fear, but that it was actually erased
in its entirety.
Now,
in a study published online by the journal Nature Neuroscience, researchers from Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science say that by weakening the communication between neurons
in two parts of a mouse's brain, they've been able to erase a
fearful memory.
Drugs that block these receptors have been shown to block the formation of
fearful memories and to reduce the anxiety associated with alcohol withdrawal
in rodents.»
When your dog or cat experiences a
fearful situation (stimulus), anxiety is increased and a deep seated, lasting
memory of the experience is buried
in your pet's brain.
For example, if it was raining at the time a child was
in a car accident, a child might connect rain with the
fearful memories of the car accident.
Bring up a
memory in which you experienced a
fearful time.
In more mature persons, however, memories of fearful events are put in perspective, and people generally do not feel the same fear they felt as a child when confronting a similar situation as an adul
In more mature persons, however,
memories of
fearful events are put
in perspective, and people generally do not feel the same fear they felt as a child when confronting a similar situation as an adul
in perspective, and people generally do not feel the same fear they felt as a child when confronting a similar situation as an adult.