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The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
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“Memory”, wrote Oscar Wilde, “is the diary that we all carry about with us”. Perhaps, but if memory is like a diary, it’s one filled with torn-out pages and fabricated passages.
In January, a group of New York University neuroscientists led by Daniela Schiller reported in the journal Nature that they had created fearful memories in people and then erased them. Besides being rather cool, the result provides new insight into how to treat traumatic memories in people.
The research was based on the work of neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, a coauthor on the paper. Ten years ago, while experimenting with rats, Ledoux made a discovery that changed the way neuroscientists view memory from that of Wilde’s tidy diary to something more along the lines of a James Frey memoir.
In that experiment, Ledoux conditioned rats to fear a bell by ringing it in time with an electric shock until the rats froze in fear at the mere sound of the bell. Then, at the moment when the fear memory was being recalled, he injected the rats with anisomycin, a drug that stops the construction of new neural connections. Remarkably, the next time he rang the bell the rats no longer froze in fear. The memory, it seemed, had vanished. Poof!
Ledoux concluded that the neural connections in which memories are stored have to be rebuilt each time a memory is recalled. And during rebuilding—or reconsolidation, as he termed it—memories can be altered or even erased. Neuroscientists now believe that reconsolidation functions to update memories with new information—something of an unsettling idea, suggesting that our memories are only as accurate as the last time they were remembered.
Since the discovery, scientists have been searching for ways to use similar methods to alter the fear memories that cause posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This, however, has proven difficult. Test subjects participating in research experiments are, of course, not lab rats, and scientists can’t simply inject them with drugs as they please. But in her new paper, Schiller and her team may have discovered a noninvasive method to bring Ledoux’s memory-erasing experiment to humans.
Psychologists have known for some time that it is difficult to treat fearful memories with therapy. Humans, like rats, can be trained in a laboratory to fear an innocuous stimulus—a sound or a color—by pairing it with a shock. But even after a form of laboratory therapy known as extinction training, where the stimulus is repeatedly presented without a shock to extinguish the fear, most subjects still show a rebound in the fear response a few hours later. Similarly, PTSD patients often show symptoms after years of therapy.
In both the laboratory and on the psychologist’s couch, trauma therapy likely fails because it simply creates new competing memories without actually altering the fear memory causing the problem. Schiller reasoned that she might be able to make extinction training—“lab therapy”—more effective by triggering reconsolidation first, allowing traumatic memories to be altered with new, less fearful information.
To do this, she created fear memories in 65 test subjects by flashing yellow and blue squares at them, pairing some of the yellow squares with a mild shock to the wrist. After conditioning, the appearance of a single yellow square was enough to raise her subjects’ skin conductivity—a fear response typically caused by an increase in sweat production.
She then divided her subjects into three groups: A third were simply given lab therapy; they repeatedly viewed yellow and blue squares without shocks until they failed to break a sweat. The rest had the fearful memory triggered first by the sight of a single yellow square, and then got lab therapy after a lag of either six hours or ten minutes. Importantly, since reconsolidation takes about ten minutes to kick in after a memory is recalled, and lasts for a couple hours, only the ten-minute group would be in the process of reconsolidating the memory at the start of lab therapy. This timing, Schiller hypothesized, was everything: the ten-minute group would actually rewrite old memories, while the others would merely create new memories.
The next day, as expected, the memory had returned in some subjects—the yellow square still caused them to sweat—but the fear response did not return in any of the subjects whom she had triggered reconsolidation in ten minutes before therapy. Just as in Ledoux’s rats, the memory had vanished. Poof!
To test how permanent the effect was, one year later, Schiller tracked down about a third of the original test subjects and got them to come back into the lab so she could again flash colored squares in their faces. The subjects that she hadn’t triggered reconsolidation in ten minutes before lab therapy still broke a sweat in the presence of the yellow square—a nice demonstration of just how hard it is to eliminate a fearful memory. But the subjects that she had triggered reconsolidation in ten minutes before therapy still didn’t break a sweat when they saw the yellow square; in these subjects, the fear memory had been permanently erased.
Schiller believes that by timing lab therapy so that it was initiated precisely when the memory was being reconsolidated—when the neural connections it was stored in were open to change—therapy did not simply create new memories, but actually rewrote the original memory with one that didn’t include a fear response.
Real life fear memories, which involve multiple senses, are much more complex than memories created by scientists in a laboratory. But the results of the experiment do make the important suggestion that in order for PTSD therapy to be effective, the traumatic memory may have to be fully remembered first. This means, of course, that if you want to overwrite a frightful mugging with a day at the beach, you may have to relive every last detail of the mugging—a reality that might make reconsolidation-based PTSD therapy rather, well, traumatic.
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30 Comments
Add CommentI have found that i can remove at least some of the painful emotion from bad memories. I catch myself at the time I am recalling a painful memory with all its associated emotions and then deliberately play the whole episode again in my mind, but this time attempting to maintain a neutral or positive view point. After doing this once or twice the painful memory seems to just wither away.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile this science is interesting, it can be really misused by governments who are very fond of wars. Or it can be used in a dictatorial set up against political enemies. Scinetists need to recommend safegurads for such interesting reserach activities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCareful Lahmad.. someone may want to erase your "fear of government".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is already being done in various therapies. One I have guided people in as well as taking part in it and experiencing the effects is to recall a past memory and then decided on a new scenario to replace the old one and with the help of a couple of supporters to play the roles of others role play the new scenario.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery effective you can feel the change happening in the body as you engage with the role play..
P.s. don't try this on others at home kids, I'm simplifying the process and there are a lot of pitfalls to avoid which could lead to actually reinforcing the initial problem or replacing one problem with another. For a start the scenario has to be win-win orientated so if you don't believe that's possible you aren't qualified to lead anyone into it.
The Book "Waking The Tiger- Healing Trauma" by Peter A. Levine, has some interesting material about how to better relate to Trauma and how to shift out of cycling and re-cycling traumatic experiences.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe book "Waking The Tiger- Healing Trauma" by Peter A. Levine, ISBN #1-55643-233-X has some very intriguing information about how to relate to trauma outside of the unproductive cycling and re-cycling of the traumatic memory.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis book has been quite beneficial for me.
You can use something called EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) to do the same thing. You tap acupressure points with your fingers (this has a calming effect) while reliving a traumatic or emotional event. You can tap and say a statement or you can visualize. It doesn't always have to be exactly on a acupressure point, but you do need to do it for a few minutes or a few repetitions of the points. It is free and easy, but you may have multiple emotions to tap on for an incident. Like you may have fear or terror because of an event and you may also have guilt for not responding a certain way. You may have anger at others for not helping or being there when you needed them. There are books and info on the internet. It an also help with emotional food addictions, anxiety attacks, and etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a survivor of emotional abuse from an alcoholic family, I was helped greatly by a counselor practicing NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), which seeks to do exactly what this article talks about, only without injections or drugs. By first framing the traumatic experience in sympathetic terms (children's fear of abuse is rational- a normal reaction to an abnormal situation), and then helping the "adult" part to learn a better reaction to current situations by realizing the trauma is in the past, one can "rewrite," if not the memory, at least the reaction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis research seems to fit well with the experience of most of us that you have to "deal with" a loss or traumatic event, you can't just try to forget it, or ignore it, or replace it with pretty memories. "Dealing with it" seems to often involve reliving and/or analyzing the event and your responses in detail. Perhaps this research explains the success of techniques that follow that kind of path.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere appears to be a close connection between this research and an extremely therapy used for treating PTSD known as eye movement desensitization and reprogramming (EMDR), which interested readers can look up on wikipedia.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"But the results of the experiment do make the important suggestion that in order for PTSD therapy to be effective, the traumatic memory may have to be fully remembered first. This means, of course, that if you want to overwrite a frightful mugging with a day at the beach, you may have to relive every last detail of the mugging..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisArthur Janov discovered this forty years ago. It's rather late to be considering this now.
"—a reality that might make reconsolidation-based PTSD therapy rather, well, traumatic."
Feeling the trauma in bits and pieces is not traumatic; it's curative. Allowing it to overwhelm the person IS traumatic. Big difference.
"But the results of the experiment do make the important suggestion that in order for PTSD therapy to be effective, the traumatic memory may have to be fully remembered first. This means, of course, that if you want to overwrite a frightful mugging with a day at the beach, you may have to relive every last detail of the mugging..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisArthur Janov discovered this forty years ago. It's rather late to be considering this now.
"—a reality that might make reconsolidation-based PTSD therapy rather, well, traumatic."
Feeling the trauma in bits and pieces is not traumatic; it's curative. Allowing it to overwhelm the person IS traumatic. Big difference.
You might also be interested in the Human Givens Approach to PTSD. It uses an approach called the Rewind Technique, which addresses 3 key areas which are needed to stop PTSD triggering from a traumatic memory
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(1) Activates the trauma template in the limbic system during the session
(2) Lowers emotional arousal so that the person is calm
(3) relives the traumatic memory through the neo cortex while remaining calm.
The difference here is that the person is not reliving the memory or experiencing the powerful emotions during the session because they are experiencing the memory from a dissociated persepctive whilst staying calm
This removes the emotional charge from the traumatic memory and can be thought of as turning it into a more neutral memory whcih can be accessed without causing emotional arousal
This in most cases achieves a dramatic result in stopping the PTSD symptoms. I have found this to be the nest approach to helping people with PTSD (and I have tried a few in my time!)
read this: http://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(08)00768-X
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI use this special technique....it's called "Denial Island".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI remove the negative emotional charge (traumatic memory) by reconsolidating myself on a sandy beach.
I use this special technique....it's called "Denial Island".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI remove the negative emotional charge (traumatic memory) by reconsolidating myself on a sandy beach.
Very interesting article.
Thanks!
Can we use this in reverse- i.e.to permenently lodge and consolidate an appropriate memory use the 10 minute?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan we use this in reverse- i.e.to permenently lodge and consolidate an appropriate memory use the 10 minute rule?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan we use this in reverse- i.e.to permenently lodge and consolidate an appropriate memory use the 10 minute rule?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, luckily we don't need scientists to create an exterior representation of the memory in order for the subject to relive it. Visualization, especially visualization of a memory, serves this purpose quite well on its own. I would suggest perhaps bringing up the memory one wants modified, thinking about it as it was to recall it fully, and then 10 minutes later putting it into a bit of a lighter context when you recall it again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think this is something we often do naturally to a certain degree. For example, an ex, once hated, who comes back into town can quickly be cast in a different light that emphasizes positive memories and marginalizes negative ones. Of course, accurate memory does serve a purpose, so it's probably best to try to minimize changes in content, instead favoring changes of context.
Well, luckily we don't need scientists to create an exterior representation of the memory in order for the subject to relive it. Visualization, especially visualization of a memory, serves this purpose quite well on its own. I would suggest perhaps bringing up the memory one wants modified, thinking about it as it was to recall it fully, and then 10 minutes later putting it into a bit of a lighter context when you recall it again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think this is something we often do naturally to a certain degree. For example, an ex, once hated, who comes back into town can quickly be cast in a different light that emphasizes positive memories and marginalizes negative ones. Of course, accurate memory does serve a purpose, so it's probably best to try to minimize changes in content, instead favoring changes of context.
More sloppy science. All that was proven is that injecting a rat with this drug prevented it from exercising voluntary muscle control to freeze in place. What other physiological tests were done to check for fear? A fear response is more than freezing in place. Blood chemistry changes, heart rate changes, breathing changes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDuring and after WW2 some UK psychiatrists used suggestion and hypnosis to encourage those suffering from combat fatigue to relive their terrifying experiences. In some case this did seem to relieve or reduce the combat caualties' suffering. This may also have taken place in the US forces.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is an interesting area of work. It certainly relates strongly to the psychodramatic methodologies where one assumption is that a professionally and appropriately set up recall and reenactment of an earlier life scene can lead to a reduction or elimination of the earlier scene's problems along with a re-integration of any dissociated aspects of a person's functioning.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the case of psychodrama the trauma or dilemma is approached from the periphery; a range of safety measures are put in place; a range of techniques are used to ensure the person is not isolated as they are doing their work; a range of safety measures are put in place for the group members who may also recall/relive earlier traumatic experiences; the pace is determined by the person doing the central piece of work; the person directing the scene has extensive training experience with the method and has dealt with their own biases to the work at hand.
Dr J L Moreno, who initially developed psychodrama and related group processes, worked I would say from a grounded theory perspective. His initial conjecture, that it is in the cauldron of the creation of a memory, feeling or view of the world that one must work, is perhaps being born out in research similar to this.
Cheers
Peter Howie in Brisbane
www.moreno.com.au
I've been working with hypnosis since 2001 and I believe that the mind never erase. I think the mind (thoughts) neither the brain (neurons connectivity) has the ability to erase. The only thing they do is to put it somewhere you can't recall it. As a fact, do a hypnosis to any of those in the experiment and you will see how they can remind the event, including meds or not. I also prefer to work with NLP and/or EFT.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was nearly killed by my mother when I was two years old, and that and general terror of her has haunted my life. I sure would love it if there were real help for this. I've re-experienced a lot of the fear and felt like I had come to terms with it - but it comes back. Nobody else has been able to help me with it. I think therapists may make such trauma worse just as easily as help. Some people say they get stuck in the feelings from the past.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI use the "power" of Consciousness to erase my bad feelings associated to bad memories. Maybe Consciousness is the key in reliving bad memories permitting to modify them (not the perceptive/sensorial, cognitive information itself - but the emotional response to them). It's that emotional response that blocks our brain in these past mental situations impeding new reactions to new apparently similar stimuli and maybe impeding new learning. So my mind remains freezed in the past: past memories preserve past sensations and these past sensations affect the interpretation of new stimuli representing an emotional and cognitive block for my mind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisErasing these feelings (like fears, anxiety, o simply high levels or other emotions) even if the original memory still lasts cannot affect my actual mental life: maybe a bad memory without a bad feeling associated with it does mean nothing to me.
I erase high levels of bad feelings (fear, disgust, pain, mistrust in me etc..) just catching a single feeling in the stream of my consciousness so fully reliving it and when it is the only protagonist in my conscious stream I simply reduce its level up to erase it- just breathe out CO2 in big quantity compared with the O2 breathed in. It has lasting effects if I breathe out most deeply and breathe in a low amount of O2: in the meantime I can feel my stream of consciousness modifying that mental state forever. It appears so simple but it requires a lot of time in performing it to make it effective in many ways and with definitive results. Using that method in me I have thought so much about the metabolic aspect of Consciousness for our Mind: I call it the metabolic gap of Consciousness that permits learning, memory recall(reliving memories), active and passive modification of them...and if memories are keeping away from this metabolic gap of Consciousness, they remains almost unchanged and their effects (maybe unconscious effects) are stable in the years.
Reminds me of Primal Therapy and other repressed emotion therapies. The idea is under traumatic circumstances the body is able to repress to survive as with children of abusive/neglectful parents whom they depend on for survival. (love and care indicating survival, abuse threatening survival) using the frontal lobe to do most of the work. The emotions exert and influence on conciseness and unconsciousness until the emotion can be fully experienced in a safe environment and integrated. I have experienced this myself and am always glad to see the meeting of science and theory. This applies to adults as well- any experience that is too painful to experience fully in the moment- we are able to hold it and deal with it later- the issue being later often never comes and suffering/neurosis ensues.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is nothing new. People already knew that the neural connections in which memories are stored have to be rebuilt each time a memory is recalled. And during rebuilding—or reconsolidation, as she termed it—memories can be altered or even erased. There is a BBC documentary of 2-3 years before about similar experiment. Rats were fed some toxins and they lost fear of electric shock. Even other techniques are there like switching particular genes ON or OFF. Being OFF erased fear in the rats to particular group of sensation. But then the website has to survive on sensational articles to gain simple audiences by making it look magical.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA new process that completely and permanently erases negative memories, beliefs and emotions is called the Mind Resonance Process (MRP) which one can learn more about at: http://telecoaching4u.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNick Arrizza M.D.