People will learn to erase unpleasant memories
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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People can be taught to erase unpleasant memories, as researchers from the University of St. Andrews found. Experts call this a breakthrough in the treatment of emotional disorders.
Post-traumatic stress disorders develop in a person after a shock. For example, a car accident, rape, participation in hostilities, hostage-taking among terrorists, etc. PTSD is based on bad memories that persecute people for years and decades.
But scientists from Scotland found that some people can be trained to forget the personal feelings associated with unpleasant memories. That is, stressful events from memory will not be erased, but the person will forget their consequences and personal attitude to what happened. In my head there will be some kind of pictures from the life of strangers, like fragments of a film.
The researchers asked the volunteers to generate emotional memories in response to various keywords, like theater, barbecue, wildlife, etc. The participants had to remember the cause of the event, its consequences and also the personal significance of all that happened, which they had learned for themselves. After that, people were asked to choose their own word, which they would associate with a memory.
In the next part, the volunteers were given key words and the words they picked themselves. The scientists asked them to either recall the event, which is connected with this pair of words, or not think about associations. As a result, the participants in the study could recall the cause of the event, but they easily forgot what exactly happened, and how it relates to them personally.
This technique, with its improvement, can be used by psychologists in working with victims of post-traumatic stress disorders in the near future.
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