Could popping a pill get rid of a phobia or help reduce PTSD reactions? Maybe one day.
A new drug that may reduce the anxiety associated with bad memories was tested on undergraduate students in Holland with some preliminary success. The drug seems to undo the effects of a Pavlovian learned response, where pictures of spiders were linked to an electrical shock. The article was published in the Feb. 15 advance online issue of Nature Neuroscience, and a summary can be viewed here.
The way I understand this, the drug helps your neurons make new associations with a stimuli or a memory that already has emotions attached to it, and that you would need to be thinking, talking or drawing about the memory/stimuli in order to access it to change it.
According to Dr. Bruce Perry, unlearning something that has been wired into our neuro-circuitry takes thousands of novel experiences to counteract the original association (unlearning). This is a difficult if not impossible undertaking- think of trying to unlearn how to ride a bike- which is why therapists try to help people learn new associations to challenge and hopefully override the old ones within the safety of the therapeutic relationship. In addition, Dr. Perry talks about how one may grow new neurons that tend to be used over the old ones, but that under times of stress it’s that older neurons that are usually accessed. This implies that when we’re stressed we’re more likely to regress and go back to a past behavior, emotional reaction, etc.
The idea of a drug that would help old neurons associated with a memory and an emotion be reorganizable could have profound effects on efficacy of treatment and overall quality of life. I also wonder if there would be negative effects that could not be anticipated. It’ll be interesting to see if this drug or similar ones are developed any further, since this research is preliminary.