How To Change Fear Memories
Steve Haines
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15 February 2015
Our body’s emergency control centre – the amygdala. The amygdala, a pair of almond-shaped structures on the left and right of the brain’s medial temporal lobe, is particularly involved in emotional memories like fear, but also in pleasurable memories associated with food, sex, or recreational drug use. When a memory is particularly striking and unexpected, it activates this emotional memory system.
Nice article on fear and memory and some research on how to change memory.They talk of giving beta blockers within 6 hours of a traumatic event (being used by the Israeli army) or stimulating the fear response some time later and then giving beta blockers (done on rats and a small human study). The beta blockers down regulate sympathetic activity. The goal is to uncouple the memory from the fear response.Cranial touch, presence and being in relationship whilst someone is meeting the edge of a difficult memory could perform the same role as beta blockers.
- "This suggests, says Phelps, that flashbulb memories differ from memories of more neutral events not because the details of the memory are preserved any better, but because we think they are. “With highly traumatic events we think we have this incredibly accurate memory,” she says. The truth is, many of the details we think are accurate are not. “Emotion focuses your attention on a few details, at the expense of a lot of others,”
- “We’re not changing your knowledge of what happened. We’re just changing its association with these fight or flight stress responses that we get”
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150205-how-extreme-fear-shapes-the-mind