Through an experiment with mice, a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has succeeded in altering the emotions – positive or negative – associated with memories without the use of chemical substances. The study has been published in the journal Nature .
For their research, the scientists stimulated certain neural circuits in the hippocampus with laser beams , the place where contextual memory information is stored, as well as in the amygdala , the area where feelings associated with that information are encoded. Thus, the stimulation of both areas made the rodents associate positive emotions with negative memories that had been forged in situations of fear. In the same way, they also achieved that positive moments were associated with stressful memories, achieving a total manipulation of the memories.
“We know that the two regions, the hippocampus and the amygdala, are connected. What we have discovered is that we can change the associations that link contextual memory with its corresponding emotions , from negative to positive and vice versa, ”says Susumu Tonegawa, leader of the study.
According to Tonegawa, this technique will serve, in the future, for the implementation of new treatments in humans with psychological problems such as post-traumatic stress or depression. Thanks to the fact that the therapy does not involve any type of chemical substance, it can become an excellent avenue for psychotherapy, which tries to take advantage of the malleability of memory to modify behaviors.
