"It may be possible to change certain types of emotional memories that cause anxiety disorders. Memories are uniquely vulnerable to alteration at two points: when we first lay them down, and later, when we retrieve them.can to rid ourselves of pathological anxiety, including using drugs to alter our painful emotional memories.By blocking the effect of norepinephrine and disrupting memory reconsolidation, we could perhaps reverse this process. The clear implication of these studies is that emotional memory is not permanent after all. Before you panic about the dystopian possibility of mind control or memory deletion, it’s important to recognize that the procedure only weakened the subjects’ fear memory and avoidant behavior. How effective this new memory-disrupting approach will be in treating more serious anxiety disorders like PTSD or panic is unclear.
At www.nytimes.com
