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Memory is such an everyday thing
that we almost take it for granted.
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We all remember what we had
for breakfast this morning,
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or what we did last weekend.
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It's only when memory starts to fail
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that we appreciate just how amazing it is,
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and how much we allow
our past experiences to define us.
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But memory is not always a good thing.
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As the American poet and clergyman
John Lancaster Spalding once said,
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"As memory may be a paradise
from which we cannot be driven,
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it may also be a hell
from which we cannot escape."
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Many of us experience
chapters of our lives
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that we would prefer
to never have happened.
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It is estimated that
nearly 90 percent of us
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will experience some sort of
traumatic event during our lifetimes.
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Many of us will suffer acutely
following these events, and then recover,
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maybe even become better people
because of those experiences.
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But some events are so extreme
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that many, up to half of those
who survive sexual violence, for example,
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will go on to develop
post-traumatic stress disorder,
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or PTSD.
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PTSD is a debilitating
mental health condition
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characterized by symptoms
such as intense fear and anxiety
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and flashbacks of the traumatic event.
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These symptoms have a huge impact
on a person's quality of life
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and are often triggered
by particular situations
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or cues in that person's environment.
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The responses to those cues may have been
adaptive when they were first learned --
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fear and diving for cover
in a war zone, for example --
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but in PTSD,
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they continue to control behavior
when it's no longer appropriate.
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If a combat veteran returns home
and is diving for cover
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when he or she hears a car backfiring,
or can't leave their own home
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because of intense anxiety,
then the response to those cues,
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those memories,
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have become what we
would refer to as maladaptive.
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In this way, we can think of PTSD
as being a disorder of maladaptive memory.
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Now I should stop myself here,
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because I'm talking about memory
as if it's a single thing.
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It isn't.
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There are many different types of memory,
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and these depend upon different circuits
and regions within the brain.
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As you can see, there are two
major distinctions in our types of memory.
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There are those memories
that we're consciously aware of,
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where we know we know
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and that we can pass on in words.
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This would include memories
for facts and events.
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Because we can declare these memories,
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we refer to these as declarative memories.
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The other type of memory
is non-declarative.
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These are memories where we often
don't have conscious access
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to the content of those memories
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and that we can't pass on in words.
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The classic example
of a non-declarative memory
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is the motor skill for riding a bike.
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Now, this being Cambridge,
the odds are that you can ride a bike.
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You know what you're doing on two wheels.
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But if I asked you to write me
a list of instructions
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that would teach me how to ride a bike,
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as my four-year old son did
when we bought him a bike
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for his last birthday,
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you would really struggle to do that.
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How should you sit on the bike
so you're balanced?
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How fast do you need to pedal
so you're stable?
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If a gust of wind comes at you,
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which muscles should you tense
and by how much
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so that you don't get blown off?
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I'll be staggered if you can give
the answers to those questions.
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But if you can ride a bike,
you do have the answers,
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you're just not consciously aware of them.
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Getting back to PTSD,
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another type of non-declarative memory
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is emotional memory.
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Now this has a specific
meaning in psychology
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and refers to our ability
to learn about cues in our environment
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and their emotional
and motivational significance.
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What do I mean by that?
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Well, think of a cue
like a smell of baking bread,
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or a more abstract cue
like a 20-pound note.
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Because these cues have been pegged
with good things in the past,
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we like them and we approach them.
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Other cues, like the buzzing of a wasp,
elicit very negative emotions
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and quite dramatic
avoidance behavior in some people.
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Now, I hate wasps.
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I can tell you that fact.
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But what I can't give you
are the non-declarative emotional memories
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for how I react
when there's a wasp nearby.
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I can't give you the racing heart,
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the sweaty palms,
that sense of rising panic.
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I can describe them to you,
but I can't give them to you.
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Now importantly,
from the perspective of PTSD,
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stress has very different effects on
declarative and non-declarative memories
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and the brain circuits
and regions supporting them.
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Emotional memory is supported
by a small almond-shaped structure
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called the amygdala and its connections.
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Declarative memory, especially the what,
where and when of ?? memory,
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is supported by a seahorse-shaped
region of the brain
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called the hippocampus.
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The extreme levels of stress
experienced during trauma
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have very different effects
on these two structures.
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As you can see, as you increase
a person's level of stress
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from not stressful to slightly stressful,
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the hippocampus,
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acting to support the event memory,
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increases in its activity
and works better to support
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the storage of that declarative memory.
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But as you increase
to moderately stressful,
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intensely stressful,
and then extremely stressful,
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as would be found in trauma,
the hippocampus effectively shuts down.
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This means that under
the high levels of stress hormones
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that are experienced during trauma,
we are not storing the details,
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the specific details,
of what, where and when.
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Now, while stress is doing that
to the hippocampus,
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look at what it does to the amygdala,
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that structure important
for the emotional, non-declarative memory.
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Its activity gets stronger and stronger.
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So what this leads us with in PTSD
is an overly strong emotional,
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in this case fear, memory
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that is not tied
to a specific time or place
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because the hippocampus
is not storing what, where and when.
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In this way, these cues
can control behavior
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when it's no longer appropriate,
and that's how they become maladaptive.
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So if we know that PTSD
is due to maladaptive memories,
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can we use that knowledge
to improve treatment outcomes
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for patients with PTSD?
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A radical new approach being developed
to treat post-traumatic stress disorder
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aims to destroy those maladaptive
emotional memories
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that underly the disorder.
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This approach has only
been considered a possibility
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because of the profound changes
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in our understanding
of memory in recent years.
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Traditionally, it was thought
that making a memory
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was like writing in a notebook in pen.
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Once the ink had dried,
you couldn't change the information.
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It was thought that all
those structural changes
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that happen in the brain
to support the storage of memory
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were finished with in about six hours,
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and after that they were permanent.
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This is known as the consolidation view.
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However, more recent research suggests
that making a memory
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is actually more like writing
in a word processor.
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We initially make the memory
and then we save it or store it,
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but under the right conditions
we can edit that memory.
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This re-consolidation view suggests
that those structural changes
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that happen in the brain to support memory
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can be undone,
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even for old memories.
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Now, this editing process
isn't happening all the time.
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It only happens under
very specific conditions
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of memory retrieval.
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So let's consider memory retrieval
as being recalling the memory
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or, like, opening the file.
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Quite often, we are simply
retrieving the memory.
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We are opening the file as read-only.
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But under the right conditions,
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we can open that file in edit mode,
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and then we can change the information.
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In theory, we could delete
the content of that file,
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and when we press save,
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that is how the file,
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the memory,
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persists.
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Not only does this re-consolidation view
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allow us to account for some
of the quirks of memory,
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like how we all sometimes
mis-remember the past,
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it also gives us a way to destroy
those maladaptive fear memories
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that underly PTSD.
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All we would need would be two things:
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a way of making the memory unstable,
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opening that file in edit mode;
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and a way to delete the information.
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We've made the most progress
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with working out
how to delete the information.
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It was found fairly early on
that a drug widely prescribed
to control blood pressure in humans,
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a beta blocker called Propranolol,
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could be used to prevent
the re-consolidation
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of fear memories in rats.
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If Propranolol was given
while the memory was in edit mode,
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rats behaved as if they were no longer
afraid of a frightening trigger cue.
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It was as if they had never learned
to be afraid of that cue.
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And this was with a drug
that was safe for use in humans.
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Now, not longer after that,
it was shown that Propranolol
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could destroy fear memories
in humans as well,
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but critically it only works
if the memory is in edit mode.
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Now, that study was with
healthy human volunteers,
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but it's important because it shows
that the rat findings
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can be extended to humans,
and ultimately to human patients.
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And with humans,
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you can test whether destroying
the non-declarative emotional memory
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does anything to
the declarative event memory.
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And this is really interesting.
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Even though people
who were given Propranolol
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while the memory was in edit mode
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were no longer afraid
of that frightening trigger cue,
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they could still describe the relationship
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between the cue
and the frightening outcome.
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It was as if they knew
they should be afraid,
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and yet they weren't.
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This suggests that Propranolol
can selectively target
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the non-declarative emotional memory
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but leave the declarative
event memory intact.
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But critically, Propranolol can only have
any effect on the memory
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if it's in edit mode.
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So how do we make a memory unstable?
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How do we get it into edit mode?
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Well, my own lab has done
quite a lot of work on this.
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We know that it depends on introducing
some but not too much new information
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to be incorporated into the memory.
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We know about the different chemicals
the brain uses to signal
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that a memory should be updated
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and the file edited.
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Now our work is mostly in rats,
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but other labs have found the same factors
allow memories to be edited in humans,
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even maladaptive memories
like those underlying PTSD.
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In fact, a number of labs
in several different countries
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have begun small-scale clinical trials
of these memory-destroying treatments
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for PTSD
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and have found really promising results.
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Now, these studies need replication
on a larger scale,
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but they show the promise
of these memory-destroying treatments
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for PTSD.
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Maybe trauma memories do not need to be
the hell from which we cannot escape.
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Now, although this memory-destroying
approach holds great promise,
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that's not to say
that it's straightforward
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or without controversy.
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Is it ethical to destroy memories?
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What about things
like eyewitness testimony?
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What if you can't give someone Propranolol
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because it would interfere
with other medicines that they're taking?
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Well, with respect to ethics
and eyewitness testimony,
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I would say the important
point to remember
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is the finding from that human study.
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Because Propranolol is only acting
on the non-declarative emotional memory,
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it seems unlikely that it would affect
eyewitness testimony,
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which is based on declarative memory.
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Essentially, what these
memory-destroying treatments
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are aiming to do
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is to reduce the emotional memory,
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not get rid of the trauma
memory altogether.
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This should make the responses
of those with PTSD
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more like those who have
been through trauma
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and not developed PTSD
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than people who have never
experienced trauma in the first place.
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I think that most people would find that
more ethically acceptable
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than a treatment that aimed
to create some sort of spotless mind.
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What about Propranolol?
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You can't give Propranolol to everyone,
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and not everyone wants to take drugs
to treat mental health conditions.
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Well here Tetris could be useful.
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Yes, Tetris.
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Working with clinical collaborators,
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we've been looking at whether
behavior interventions
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can also interfere with
the re-consolidation of memories.
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Now, how would that work?
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Well, we know that
it's basically impossible
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to do two tasks at the same time
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if they both depend on
the same brain region for processing.
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Think trying to sing along to the radio
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while you're trying to compose an email.
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The processing for one
interferes with the other.
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Well, it's the same when
you retrieve the memory,
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especially in edit mode.
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If we take a highly visual symptom
like flashbacks and PTSD
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and get people to recall
the memory in edit mode,
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and then get them to do
a highly engaging visual task
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like playing Tetris,
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it should be possible to introduce
so much interfering information
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into that memory
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that it essentially becomes meaningless.
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That's the theory,
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and it's supported by data
from healthy human volunteers.
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Now, our volunteers watched
highly unpleasant films --
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so think eye surgery,
road traffic safety adverts,
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Scorsese's "The Big Shave."
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These trauma films produce
something like flashbacks
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in healthy volunteers
for about a week after viewing them.
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We found that getting people
to recall those memories,
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the worst moments
of those unpleasant films,
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and playing Tetris at the same time,
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massively reduced the frequency
of the flashbacks,
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and again the memory had to be
in edit mode for that to work.
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Now, my collaborators have since
taken this to clinical populations.
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They've tested this in survivors
of road traffic accidents
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and mothers who have had
emergency Caesarean sections,
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both types of trauma
that frequently lead to PTSD,
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and they found really promising
reductions in symptoms
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in both of those clinical cases.
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So although there is still much to learn
and procedures to optimize,
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these memory-destroying treatments
hold great promise
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for the treatment
of mental health disorders
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like PTSD.
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Maybe trauma memories do not need
to be a hell from which we cannot escape.
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I believe that this approach
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should allow those who want to
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to turn the page
on chapters of their lives
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that they would prefer
to never have experienced,
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and so improve our mental health.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)