{"id":308932,"date":"2018-04-04T10:21:29","date_gmt":"2018-04-04T14:21:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=308932"},"modified":"2018-04-11T14:51:04","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T18:51:04","slug":"can-you-erase-fear-from-a-scary-memory-308932","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/can-you-erase-fear-from-a-scary-memory-308932\/","title":{"rendered":"Can you erase fear from a scary memory?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you think of a memory as something neatly stored away in your brain, like an old wedding dress that you can unpack, admire, and carefully fold away again, neuroscientist Daniela Schiller has news for you.<\/p>\n

Your memories change every time you recall them.<\/p>\n

\n

GUEST LECTURE<\/h2>\n

Daniela Schiller will present \u201cForgetting Fear,\u201d<\/a> part of the Humanities Center<\/a>\u2019s Public Lecture Series\u2014this year on the theme of memory and forgetting\u2014on April 12 at 5 p.m. in the Hawkins-Carlson Room at Rush Rhees Library.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWhen we remember something, we reconstruct it,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not like taking a picture. We have to build the memory. And the more we retrieve it, the more it\u2019s getting involved in our present life. It gets modified.\u201d<\/p>\n

And those changes aren\u2019t a failure of memory, either. They\u2019re what remembering is actually for, says Schiller, who\u2019ll be delivering a Humanities Center<\/a> public lecture on April 12.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not really about documenting the past,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s more about enabling us to understand the present and make predictions for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

The malleability of memory may alarm judges and juries, but for people with traumatic memories, it represents opportunity\u2014because neuroscience may be able to help them remove painful emotions from harrowing memories. Recollection of the event would be left, but without the agonizing feelings.<\/p>\n

\u201cMemory is a state of the brain that we can negotiate,\u201d says Schiller, who leads the Schiller Lab for Affective Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her work has promise for people with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, addiction, and phobias.<\/p>\n

While the research is still in an early phase, scientists have a growing understanding of the basic mechanisms involved in disconnecting emotion from memory. \u201cI think we\u2019re just in the process of making it clinically relevant. That\u2019s the next major goal,\u201d Schiller says.<\/p>\n

\"Daniela
Daniela Schiller, who leads the Schiller Lab for Affective Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The laboratory protocols she and her team use involve straightforward classical conditioning, the association between a cue and something negative or positive. \u201cBut in real life\u2014say in combat\u2014you have many, many cues,\u201d she says. \u201cSounds, smells, visions. It\u2019s a complex picture, an event that unfolds over time. Sometimes it\u2019s a repeated event. And it\u2019s intense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taming a person\u2019s traumatic memories is complicated. But the simple models are allowing allow researchers to isolate the fundamental components of memory, with the goal of developing drugs and behaviors that can help to remove fear and other debilitating emotions from memories.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what we gain is freedom,\u201d she says. Memories can be positive and healthy. \u201cBut negative memories can keep you in chains. And you think that, because it happened in the past, there\u2019s no way to change it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many processes already used in therapy involve reshaping, negotiating, and reconstructing memory. But neuroscience is showing that memory is actually designed to foster just such reinvention.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what we can get from science is that it\u2019s not just a therapeutic approach that could be effective,\u201d says Schiller. \u201cIt\u2019s actually the way memory is. And just like when we become better aware of any mechanism in the brain, we can probably use it better, more adaptively, and wisely.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Humanities Center’s year-long look at memory and forgetting continues with a public lecture from neuroscientist Daniela Schiller, whose work on the malleability of memory has promise for people with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, addiction, and phobias.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":752,"featured_media":309542,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[456],"tags":[14,29502,25132],"class_list":["post-308932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-culture","tag-events","tag-featured-post-side","tag-humanities-center"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCan you erase fear from a scary memory?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Humanities Center's look at memory and forgetting continues with a public lecture from neuroscientist Daniela Schiller, whose work has promise for people with 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