Zapping the brain with a short burst of electric current could help reduce specific negative memories in depressed people, UPI reported.
Researchers at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands found that, when strategically timed, electroconvulsive (ECT) or electro shock therapy could wipe away unpleasant memories. Researchers say this could pave the way for new treatments for mental trauma, psychiatric disorders and drug addiction, the Business-Standard reported.
The research is based on a theory called "memory reconsolidation" which says that memories are not permanent and the brain takes them out of "mental storage" each time they are accessed and reconsolidates them, making them vulnerable to alteration or even erasure, researchers told the international weekly science journal Nature.
Researchers tested this theory on 42 patients who were prescribed ECT for major depression. During the study, the patients were shown two disturbing slide-show narratives: one depicting a car accident, and the other a physical assault.
The patients were asked to recall one of the stories replaying part of that slide show and immediately given ECT afterwards.
The Business-Standard reported that a day later the participants were asked multiple choice questions about the slideshows, and were significantly worse at answering questions about the slideshow that was "erased," while they were able to answer questions about the slideshow that wasn't.
"This provides very strong and compelling evidence that memories in the human brain undergo reconsolidation, and that a window of opportunity exists to treat bad memories," Daniela Schiller, a neuroscientist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York who also studies memory reconsolidation, told Nature.
The study was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
