“The field of psychiatry is facing a paradigm shift with new research suggesting that medications and psychotherapy may be able to permanently erase the “trauma” from traumatic memories, according to several experts.
The experimental treatment, known as reconsolidation blockade, has been shown to interrupt the neurobiologic process of memory formation.
“We do not erase people’s memories,” Alain Brunet, Ph.D., said at the annual meeting of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. Dr. Brunet of the department of psychiatry at McGill University, Montreal, is one of the first researchers to report results of the treatment in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Rather than erasing an entire memory, reconsolidation blockade appears to erase the emotional reaction to the memory, explained Dr. Roger K. Pitman, director of the posttraumatic stress disorder and psychophysiology laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston.”
http://www.internalmedicinenews.com/news/mental-health/single-article/ptsd-treatment-research-begins-to-target-memory-reconsolidation/ae9fdffc8a.html
