From memory you can erase the feeling of fear
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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Under the influence of fear, a person is able to perform the most insane acts, because this feeling deprives people of the opportunity to dispose of their own minds and adequately respond to the situation. Very often phobias, fears and anxiety have no grounds and are absolutely groundless, however, it is very difficult to get rid of them, sometimes the struggle with them is prolonged for life.
Newly formed emotional memories can be erased from the human brain. This was stated by Swedish scientists.
In the course of a large-scale study, the results of which are published in the journal Science, experts have proved that when people learn about something there is a consolidation of memory, due to which memories pass into memory long-term. Behind this process is the formation of proteins.
When people try to remember something, then for a short period the memory becomes unstable, but then the process of consolidation follows. It can not be said that we do not exactly remember what happened. We simply remember not the event itself as a fact but its last thoughts about this event.
But if you influence the consolidation process that follows memory, you can influence the memory content.
The memorization of new information is accompanied by the modification of special proteins in the nuclei of nerve cells that participate in the packaging of DNA. If you block this process, then the ability to remember new events is lost.
Volunteers who participated in the experiment were shown images of neutral content, accompanying this process by the action of an electric current. The brain remembers a sense of fear. When demonstrating these pictures once again without the impact of current, people still felt fear.
If the process of memory consolidation was violated, subsequent demonstrations of images did not cause any emotion.
Scientists tracked these processes with the help of magnetic resonance imaging. It turned out that when the consolidation process was blocked, the part of the memory that the fear remembered was erased in the brain.
"Our research can be a real breakthrough in the study of memory processes and feelings of fear," says Thomas Agren, co-author of the study. "This discovery is very important for people who are prone to phobias and anxieties."
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