Magnetic Stimulation Of The Brain Erased Unpleasant Memories - Alternative View

Table of contents:

Magnetic Stimulation Of The Brain Erased Unpleasant Memories - Alternative View
Magnetic Stimulation Of The Brain Erased Unpleasant Memories - Alternative View

Video: Magnetic Stimulation Of The Brain Erased Unpleasant Memories - Alternative View

Video: Magnetic Stimulation Of The Brain Erased Unpleasant Memories - Alternative View
Video: Can You Erase Bad Memories? 2024, March
Anonim

Scientists hope that as a result, it can be used to treat people who have experienced traumatic stress.

With the help of transcranial magnetic stimulation of the brain, Italian neurophysiologists have successfully erased unpleasant memories from the volunteers. Scientists hope that this technology can be used to develop a treatment for PTSD and other mental disorders. The description of the scientists' work was published by the scientific journal Current Biology.

“Experiments have shown that we can change how long potentially unpleasant and traumatic memories are stored. This is very important from the point of view of rehabilitation and clinical medicine. Our technique can be used for a variety of purposes, starting with the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, which we plan to do in the near future,”said one of the study authors, professor at the University of Bologna (Italy) Giuseppe di Pellegrino.

During transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), magnetic signals of different frequencies can be used to non-contact increase or decrease the activity of different parts of the brain. Penetrating into the brain, these signals generate impulses of electricity that change the nature of the work of nerve cells in the area where the device is directed.

Experiments over the past decade show that TMS can suppress symptoms of Parkinson's disease and bulimia, reduce the urge to smoke and other bad habits, and improve the arithmetic and language abilities of volunteers. Its mass application is still hindered by the fact that physicists and engineers have not yet figured out how to fit TMS into an autonomous and compact device.

Di Pellegrino and his colleagues have figured out how to use such a device to remove already established unpleasant memories. This idea was prompted by the study of the so-called memory reconsolidation. This is what neurophysiologists call the process during which the brain periodically reproduces memories of events stored in long-term memory, and strengthens them.

Erasing memories

Promotional video:

“Every time a memory is played back, it is in a state for some time where it can be changed. We have developed a protocol that uses this 'window of variability' to intervene in the process of reconsolidating unpleasant memories,”explained di Pellegrino's colleague Simone Battaglia.

This became possible due to the fact that Italian neurophysiologists discovered that this phase of reconsolidation of the memory of fear and unpleasant emotions occurs in one of the regions of the prefrontal cortex, which can be “reached” with the help of TMS. Guided by this idea, neurophysiologists gathered a group of 100 volunteers and tried to erase from them an unpleasant memory created during the experiment.

Scientists showed volunteers a set of neutral photographs and at the same time periodically inflicted quite painful electric shocks on them. As a result, the study participants quickly formed an association between these images and the pain from electric shocks.

A few days later, scientists invited them to repeat the experiment, trying to revive the memories of the electroshock they had experienced using the same photographs. At this time, neurophysiologists affected different regions of their brain using TMS, trying to “grope” the chains of neurons that were involved in the consolidation of negative memories.

The next day, the scientists checked whether the volunteers' memories had changed by showing them the photographs again. As it turned out, stimulation of certain regions of the prefrontal cortex really saved the volunteers from fear and unpleasant memories, despite the fact that they did not forget the events of the previous day. Impact on other parts of the brain did not give such results.

The successful completion of these experiments, according to Di Pellegrino, paves the way for the use of TMS as a therapy for post-traumatic stress syndrome and other mental disorders due to which a person forms long-term or obsessive negative memories.