Erasable fears?

Once you become terribly afraid of something, will it be permanent? Will you always be afraid of the same thing? Recent research found that in the brain of mice, which approximates the human brain to an extent that scientists can feel comfortable with, there is a protein which appears when mice learn to fear something but when they removed this molecule, the mice seemed to have forgotten all about that particular fear. In other words, memory is a protein.

The study recently appeared in the journal Science and it was conducted by Roger Clem and Richard Huganir of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. They did this by having mice associate a particular sound with the experience of electrical shock. After this experience, every time the mice would hear that sound, they would freeze in fear and this happened reportedly even days after the shock. Then the scientists noticed the appearance of a protein in the amygdala, the part of the brain that is responsible for emotions. When they removed this protein by using drugs to neutralize it, the mice no longer showed fear of that particular sound.

This study is made more interesting by the fact that in December 2009, there was a study that showed that fear can still be erased from memory within six hours from when it registers in someone’s brain. It appeared in the journal Nature. The study involved having subjects being wired with electrodes and given a shock when they are shown colored squares. The scientists then asked the subjects to recall the experience of the shock and then were shown the colored squares once again, but this time without the shock. The subjects lost the fear of those particular colored squares.

Science is now giving us at least two ways to get rid of specific fears either by drugs which can remove the protein that makes that fear come alive or by reversing the experience of fear within six hours after you are made to recall it. It is so important to remember that for the second approach, the therapist need not act within six hours after the traumatic experience happened to you. It just needs to happen within six hours from when you are made to remember the exact incident.

When I got married in my 20s, I found myself employing self-designed “fear removal” experiences NOT because I had such a solid understanding of what neuroscience but because it appealed to my poetic sense. When I visit a place that brings back bad memories, I try to recall those memories and do something there that would undoubtedly make me happy. It seems to work for me and I even tried it with someone I loved and it seemed to work for him and our marriage as well. I called them trips to “redeem moments.” I guess it stems from an understanding that places or images do not carry their own memories, but rather, we give them our own. If that were so, then I figured, we could also take those memories away or replace them with new ones. I also was very stubborn to submit the rest of my life to traumatic memories of my past over which I had little control. These studies suggest that I was not just being hopelessly poetic but that we really could erase specific fears. For people who help traumatized victims, these methods are very promising for this means that fear from specific events need not be permanently paralyzing. Science once again came through with approved therapeutic claims — confirming that life’s scars need not mark us forever.

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