Study Altering traumatic memories

[MyPTSD]

Scientists could be a step closer to finding a way to reduce the impact of traumatic memories.

Continue reading...

 

[Friday]

The idea of erasing memories vexes me.

 

[somerandomguy]

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

 

[coraxxx]

I'm quite unsure of how they are doing it practically. Is that a sort of sophisticated click training to divert memories to the point of loss? But wouldn't then the other cue encapsulate fear responses, but with no sense attached to it on top?

For having been quizzed over and over about traumatic content there are things I did frankly forget about what I was supposed to be answering as a protection mechanism. I don't feel much conscious fear from that one that I don't remember well anymore while I used to, but the discomfort of the quizzing just displaced to be quizzed in itself. The whole baggage of guilt and fear comes back, without the first layer memory.

They don't seem to say anything very substantial in extinguishing responses. Extinguishing a memory doesn't necessarily extinguish a response. A lot of work of trauma is precisely to find out what is causing the PTSD in cases where memories are difficult to access, so why digging them further away.

I had awful emotional flashbacks while seeing people asleep and not understanding why until I remembered certain circumstances. Knowing it helps me to anchor, not the reverse. What was an sense of impending doom became something as uncomfortable, but not senseless and displaced on a screen ratiocination or pure spiralling. If it makes sense.

 

[siniang]

Memories are one thing.

The parasympatric reactivity of the reptilian part of out brain is another.

I don't think creating an even larger disconnect between the two would be in any way helpful.

 

[Friday]

I don't think creating an even larger disconnect between the two would be in any way helpful.

Yep. What strikes me is that they’re attempting to create the problems of childhood trauma -with total memory loss of the events, and all the problems that follow that- in adults with total recal of the traumas they lived through. It just seems like moving backwards, to me.

 

[siniang]

It just seems like moving backwards, to me.

I didn't read the actual paper, but to me it at had a strong feel of psychology disconnected from biology. That's decades worth backwards.

The (interdisciplinary-defaulted) biologist in me is very skeptical. Very very skeptical.

 

[Sideways]

Would be gawdawful to have been a participant in that study - deliberately creating new cues to trigger the same traumatic response as a trauma-related trigger? Wtf!?

Yes to research into new treatment options for ptsd, but a definite No to increasing the amount of triggers I have. Thanks, but no thanks!