overcoming fear
according to a study published in September 22 in Nature Neuroscience, people may be able to reimagine and reduce the power of fearful memories while they sleep.
The study’s authors were inspired by extensive research showing that sleep is important for consolidating memory and by the successes of exposure therapy, which has been shown to help patients overcome fear by repeatedly exposing them to fear-associated stimuli.
People who think they are skilled nappers signup for the study, in which they were exposed to odors such as lemon, mint, wood, and clove while viewing images of faces and, in some cases, receiving electric shocks. The participants learned to fear the pair of faces and smells associated with shocks.
The participants then took naps, which has been associated with memory consolidation—while the researchers repeatedly exposed them to fear-related smells. At first, when exposed to the fear-associated smells, the electrical conductance of the participants’ skin increased, indicating that the smells were activating fear-related memories. But after repeated exposure, their fear responses diminished. Once awake, the participants were less afraid of the whose corresponding odors they had been exposed to while asleep than those whose corresponding odors they had not smelled during their naps.
When the researchers did the same things with people who were awake, they were unsuccessful. The researchers performed the same procedure, but rather than asking the participants to take naps, they had them watch nature documentaries.
Jan Born, a neuroscientist at the University of Tübingen in Germany who was not involved in the study, said that “What is unexpected is the presenting the related-odor during sleep . . . in fact leads to an extinction process rather than enhancing the learned”
Katherina Hauner, a postdoctoral scholar at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and lead author of the study, suggested that a version of the technique
The study’s authors were inspired by extensive research showing that sleep is important for consolidating memory and by the successes of exposure therapy, which has been shown to help patients overcome fear by repeatedly exposing them to fear-associated stimuli.
People who think they are skilled nappers signup for the study, in which they were exposed to odors such as lemon, mint, wood, and clove while viewing images of faces and, in some cases, receiving electric shocks. The participants learned to fear the pair of faces and smells associated with shocks.
The participants then took naps, which has been associated with memory consolidation—while the researchers repeatedly exposed them to fear-related smells. At first, when exposed to the fear-associated smells, the electrical conductance of the participants’ skin increased, indicating that the smells were activating fear-related memories. But after repeated exposure, their fear responses diminished. Once awake, the participants were less afraid of the whose corresponding odors they had been exposed to while asleep than those whose corresponding odors they had not smelled during their naps.
When the researchers did the same things with people who were awake, they were unsuccessful. The researchers performed the same procedure, but rather than asking the participants to take naps, they had them watch nature documentaries.
Jan Born, a neuroscientist at the University of Tübingen in Germany who was not involved in the study, said that “What is unexpected is the presenting the related-odor during sleep . . . in fact leads to an extinction process rather than enhancing the learned”
Katherina Hauner, a postdoctoral scholar at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and lead author of the study, suggested that a version of the technique