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An Injection Straight to the Brain Makes Rats Forget Their Fears
From popular science (shills)
Just about everyone can think of some memory he or she would rather forget. For some, it's something like a relationship gone wrong, or high school. For others -- like soldiers returning from war zones -- those bad memories can be highly disruptive, impeding the ability to live a normal life. But Puerto Rican researchers may have found a way to reduce the fear associated with our memories by injecting a naturally occurring chemical directly into the brain, replacing anxiety with feelings of security.
This isn't the stuff of sci-fi; the procedure doesn't pave over miserable memories with better, different ones. It works by chemically mimicking what's known in the lab as extinction learning. For instance: Researchers can instill a learned fear in lab rats in a Pavlovian fashion, sounding a certain tone while applying a light shock to the rats. After a while, rats learn to fear the pain associated with the chime. Researchers can undo this process via extinction learning, which is the exact opposite; sound the chime but don't present the shock. Do this enough times and rats can unlearn that fear.
Related ArticlesScientists Use Precise Flashes of Light to Implant False Memories in Fly BrainsFor the First Time, Scientists Photograph Memories Being Formed Modeling MemoriesTagsScience, Clay Dillow, anxiety, biology, fear, neurology, neuroscience, ptsdResearchers at the University of Puerto Rico set their experiment up around just such a model, but they wanted to extinguish the fear chemically, rather than through repetitive learning. To do so, they injected a naturally occurring chemical known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) into the rats' infralimbic prefrontal cortexes. BDNF is involved in several types of learning, including extinction learning. The researchers hoped that by artificially upping the amount present in the prefrontal cortex they could coax the rats into unlearning their fear of the chime. In experiments, rats were conditioned to fear the chime via electric shock until they would consistently freeze up each time the chime sounded. The next day, rather than undergoing extinction learning, the variable group was injected with BDNF. The control rats were left untouched. The next day, researchers began sounding the chime. The control rats seized up as expected, fearful of the shock. The variable rats did not. Further testing showed that the BDNF experiment very closely mirrored genuine extinction training.
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From popular science (shills)
Just about everyone can think of some memory he or she would rather forget. For some, it's something like a relationship gone wrong, or high school. For others -- like soldiers returning from war zones -- those bad memories can be highly disruptive, impeding the ability to live a normal life. But Puerto Rican researchers may have found a way to reduce the fear associated with our memories by injecting a naturally occurring chemical directly into the brain, replacing anxiety with feelings of security.
This isn't the stuff of sci-fi; the procedure doesn't pave over miserable memories with better, different ones. It works by chemically mimicking what's known in the lab as extinction learning. For instance: Researchers can instill a learned fear in lab rats in a Pavlovian fashion, sounding a certain tone while applying a light shock to the rats. After a while, rats learn to fear the pain associated with the chime. Researchers can undo this process via extinction learning, which is the exact opposite; sound the chime but don't present the shock. Do this enough times and rats can unlearn that fear.
Related ArticlesScientists Use Precise Flashes of Light to Implant False Memories in Fly BrainsFor the First Time, Scientists Photograph Memories Being Formed Modeling MemoriesTagsScience, Clay Dillow, anxiety, biology, fear, neurology, neuroscience, ptsdResearchers at the University of Puerto Rico set their experiment up around just such a model, but they wanted to extinguish the fear chemically, rather than through repetitive learning. To do so, they injected a naturally occurring chemical known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) into the rats' infralimbic prefrontal cortexes. BDNF is involved in several types of learning, including extinction learning. The researchers hoped that by artificially upping the amount present in the prefrontal cortex they could coax the rats into unlearning their fear of the chime. In experiments, rats were conditioned to fear the chime via electric shock until they would consistently freeze up each time the chime sounded. The next day, rather than undergoing extinction learning, the variable group was injected with BDNF. The control rats were left untouched. The next day, researchers began sounding the chime. The control rats seized up as expected, fearful of the shock. The variable rats did not. Further testing showed that the BDNF experiment very closely mirrored genuine extinction training.
READ MORE
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