Passage 1 A Way to Rewrite Memories of Fear?
重寫(xiě)“恐怖記憶” 《時(shí)代周刊》
[00:01]Recalling a frightening moment or event can be unsettling as your body
[00:08]revisits the sense of danger and panic you first experienced,
[00:13]and the frequent recurrence of these recollections can even lay a foundation
[00:21]for anxiety disorders. Yet, according to new research from the department of psychology
[00:30]at New York University, there may actually be a way to rewrite these "fear memories"
[00:38]to extract the sting of panic and discomfort. Previous research into long-term memory
[00:48]has found that, with "extinction training"-which involves re-living a frightening experience
[00:56]in a safe environment-psychologists are able to help people suppress fear memories.
[01:04]Yet, even with this technique, stressful situations can still cause that memory,
[01:14]and the emotions associated with it, to come surging back.
[01:20]What researchers found in this latest study, however,
[01:25]was that in the period just after a memory is recollected,
[01:31]and before it is "reconsolidated" back into our mind's memory bank,
[01:37]it may be vulnerable to editing.
[01:42]The study, published in the journal Nature, created fear memories in subjects
[01:49]by showing them an object while simultaneously delivering mild electric shocks.
[01:57]Researchers confirmed the fear memories by measuring skin conductivity response-
[02:05]an indication of sympathetic nervous system activation-
[02:12]when subjects were later shown the objects.
[02:16]On the second day of the study, subjects were asked to recall the object from the day before,
[02:24]a request that required them to pull up the fear memory,
[02:30]and also initiate the reconsolidation process.
[02:35]Shortly after subjects were reminded of the fear memory,
[02:41]researchers introduced new information intended to rewrite that memory-suggesting
[02:50]that the original object was in fact safe, not harmful. On the third day of the study,
[02:58]subjects were again shown the object while researchers monitored them for fear response.
[03:06]They found that, subjects who had introduced new, safe information into a fear memory
[03:14]during the reconsolidation window didn't show any fear response when later shown the object
[03:23]used to create the memory. What's more,
[03:27]researchers tested a group of the original study participants a year later to determine
[03:34]if the effects persisted, and found that, even after so much time had elapsed,
[03:42]exposure to the object still didn't inspire a fear response.
[03:48]The team of researchers, led by NYU post-doctoral fellow Daniela Schiller,
[03:57]hope that these findings might offer an alternative to pharmaceuticals-
[04:03]which are often relied on to help people stop the cycle of fear-
[04:10]and lead to therapeutic techniques that enable people battling anxiety disorders
[04:17]or other conditions to rewrite and overcome their fear memories.
