Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ErasingFear (Understanding the Stability and Plasticity of Emotional Memory)
Reporting period: 2021-01-01 to 2022-06-30
The key objective of the proposal is to gain an in-depth, comprehensive understanding of the dynamic balance between the stability and malleability of emotional memory, and consequently develop a revolutionary theory-driven treatment for people suffering from emotional memory disorders.
Why Research on Emotional Memory and Therapeutic Forgetting?
Anxiety Disorders are very common (60 million in Europe), so common that we almost forget the high burden of these disorders. The fears range from very broad anxieties to specific fears and phobias,
but also, specific fears (spider phobia, fear of dogs, heights or small spaces) are sometimes very complex and can be devastating and interfering with people’s daily life. Current pharmacological and psychological treatments for disorders of emotional memory only dampen the affective response while leaving the original fear memory intact. Under adverse circumstances, these original memories regain prominence, causing relapses in many patients. Disrupting the process of memory reconsolidation has the potential to fundamentally advance the treatment for fears and anxiety disorders.
Figure 1. Dynamic balance between the stability and malleability of emotional memory
Boundary conditions that affect the post reactivation fate of memory: Behavioral expression of fear during memory reactivation is not necessary or sufficient to trigger post-reactivation mnemonic processes. However, a match/mismatch based on prior learning, introduced during a reactivation trial, results in prediction error that is necessary for destabilization of memory. Depending on the number of errors generated during memory reactivation, as well as the nature of the original learning trial, memories may enter one of several states, namely; sole retrieval, reconsolidation, an intermediate limbo state or extinction. In our ongoing studies we aim to delineate the transition between these different states in humans, both in healthy participants who acquire a specific in the laboratory (i.e. fear-conditioning studies) and in clinical trials (i.e. patients suffering specific fears and phobias).
Clearly, this research has huge implications for the clinical field, with the possibility of novel and effective treatments requiring minimal time or cost. Inspired by the novel insights on how to change unduly intense fears, dr Kindt has established an outpatient clinic for phobias and anxiety disorders (Kindt Clinics https://kindtclinics.com/) where she is the founder and scientific director. Kindt Clinics applies the scientific advancements of the ErasingFear project to treat individuals with severe fear and anxiety disorders, with 80% of clients overcoming their fear or phobia basically within one day.