Another study, this time from the Universiteit van Amsterdam, demonstrates that memories – most particularly long-term fear memories – are encoded when they first happen and then again whenever we re-store those memories. There is a short period of time in which the brain must chemically “prepare” and then “store” the memory. Whenever we bring the memory back to mind, it must go through the same process to re-store it in the brain. In both of these labile phases, the memory is vulnerable to change.
This research strongly suggests that memories are not, therefore, permanent structures in the brain. Their emotional content can be removed by interrupting the labile phase of long-term memory storage.
I wrote about the brain’s file cabinet in another post (Click here to read). Basically, the brain requires a chemical to access memories and to code them back after accessing them. It’s as though we take each memory, like a file, out of the long-term memory cabinet, close the cabinet, look at the file, use it, then open the cabinet again to put the file back in. If I understand Kindt’s research correctly, interrupting that process at the “putting back in” phase can, in theory, stop the perpetuation of the effects of fear memories by eliminating the fear in the memories.
According to the Universiteit van Amsterdam study by Merel Kindt, et al, published on 15 February 2009 on the website of Nature Neuroscience as an Advance Online Publication, chemically (using propranolol) interrupting the fear memory labile phase caused human subjects to lose their fear responses while retaining their memory of events connected to them.
I contend that without using propranolol it may be possible to bring forth an emotionally charged memory, deflate it of emotional energy, and then re-encode it back into long-term memory – without the emotional element attached. I’ve seen this process thousands of times in Rapid Eye Technology sessions and in my own work with clients complaining of irrational fears of all kinds.
My hope is that some ingenious scientist with the proper laboratory setup might experiment with more than Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) that was mentioned in the study article and look at the many types of alternative therapies around. Certainly, with the basic structure of the study in place, substituting an injection of propranolol with a technique like Rapid Eye Technology or Emotional Freedom Technique or hypnosis could easily be done and results scientifically observed and measured.
Study resource: Merel Kindt, Marieke Soeter and Bram Vervliet at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research