In the 2004 movie Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Jim Carey and Kate Winslet (pictured left) both pay to have
memories of their painful love affair obliterated. Is sci-fi onto something?
New Treatment for PTSD Neuroscientists Alain Brunet and Karim Nader of McGill
University have experimented with using hypertension medication, propanol, to
alter the way the brain responds to traumatic memories. This kind of research spawned a sea-change in the field of neurobiology about memory. The research
increasingly suggests that our memories are altered each time we recall them. "For
a hundred years, people thought memory was wired into the brain," Nader says. "Instead,
we find it can be rewired-you can add false information to it, make it
stronger, make it weaker, and possibly even make it disappear."
Nader and Brunet's treatment results show promise at
significantly shortening the recovery from PTSD and validate existing models of
psychotherapy that use "in the moment" techniques to create a new experience of
an old memory, thought, or belief. It's not quite about erasing bad memories, but with the right technique it is possible to
change our relationship to our memories.
Psychotherapy or Psycho-sculpting?
The memory research that used propanol consisted of individuals with PTSD who
experienced a traumatic event and later had emotional disturbances from the
trauma. One typical case is the example of a woman who was in a head-on
automobile collision that persistently experienced the sensation of the car barreling
into her, triggering the feeling of terror and her body's fight/flight/freeze
response. The therapy had the woman take
short-acting beta-blockers during her deliberate recall of the crash. Because
beta-blockers block the action of adrenaline, it prevented her from tensing up
and getting anxious. This allowed her to permanently change how she remembered
the crash. She did not forget the crash, but was able to reshape her memory of
the event, stripping away the terror while leaving the facts behind.
Implications for Non-Trauma Application
While the drug-psychotherapy combination is a wonderful
breakthrough for PTSD and trauma treatment, there remain many
non-pharmacological psychotherapies designed to work the same way. Hypnotherapy, Eye Movement Desensitizing and Reprocessing (EMDR), and
Internal Family Systems (IFS), are therapy models that have
experienced a surge of interest in the last decade. These approaches share the same
theoretical principles of reprocessing maladaptive memories and beliefs that undergird the propanol study, minus the drugs. IFS has the reputation of being used flexibly with both trauma and more pedantic concerns like career
path, partnering in relationships, as well as issues relating to stress and
depression.
