Scientists Transform Bad Memories Into Good!

 

 

 

Scientists have developed a method that allows the negative emotional experience of an event from the past to reverse the positive: direct manipulation of neurons that cause it.

 

In the laboratory of Nobel Prize winner Susumu Tonegave, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a scientific team conducted an experiment in which mice first created positive and negative memories so they - after they entered into a certain part of the cage - give or reward in the form of food, or a mild electric shock .

 

 

Such memories have two components, which are responsible for the two different parts of the brain. While the memory of the place where the event occurred is located in the hippocampus, an emotional component (positive or negative experience of the event) is located in the amygdala.

 

To have turned the negative into positive memories, scientists in the brains of males laser reactivation of neurons in the hippocampus responsible for the component places where they were subjected to electric shocks, where the animals give a positive stimulus - in this case, socializing with females.

 

 

Before the intervention, the mice avoided the cage in which they were given electric shocks, but now they entered into it, looking for friends. The method has proved effective in the reverse direction. Manipulation of cells allowed the mice to avoid the area in which they previously received the award in the form of food.

 

 

The latest findings will not directly affect the treatment of mental illnesses, but it certainly helps in finding scientific arguments for certain types of treatment to be applied in the treatment of depression and anxiety.

 

 

 

"One of the popular techniques in cognitive-behavioral therapy is that the patient be shown the one which scares, for example, spiders, and learn to think of something positive," explains Howard Ajhenbaum, neorolog University in Boston.