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Can sleep 'erase' painful memories?

can-sleep-erase-painful-memories

Imagine not living with the burden of old traumatizing recollections — a world in which sound sleep doesn’t get ruined by a panic attack over scars that were too recent to heal. 


The studies on this topic are early, but they’re promising. The US study Aversive memories can be compromised in human sleep through reactivation of positive interfering memories 2024 aimed to investigate the inhibition of negative memories by reactivating positive ones. A team of researchers decided to try to counteract bad memories with a good night’s sleep and replace them with positive ones. 


They had 37 participants assign a made-up word to an unpleasant visual stimulus, such as a wound or an animal that was unsafe. They tried later to ‘reprogram’ half of those memories by playing up a good image (such as happy children or tranquil scenes) and connecting it to the same words. The real part of the experiment was done while the subjects were asleep. The second night, while the patients were deep asleep (NREM), researchers played tapes of the imaginary words. 


The corresponding brain activity in emotional memories also spiked when positive stimuli were used. 

Results indicated that after this sleep intervention, participants couldn’t recall the bad memories as much and rather concentrated on the positive ones. They think that this method might be an alternative to therapeutics in dealing with trauma or unwanted memories. 

But they warn that this was a lab-controlled study, and that lived traumatic memories are stronger and more difficult to modify. We also don’t yet know the extent of these changes in memory. The memory editing concept sounds exciting, but more work is needed before we can apply it in the real world. 

It’s not the first time memory was studied by researchers. It’s a fascinating 2021 study, published in Nature Communications, that has found that a change in how we conceptualise our negative experiences can make enduring differences. 

When we attach the memory of something bad to something good, we can modulate our experience of the event – the next time we think about it, we might feel something good instead of something unpleasant. This is done through something called cognitive regulation – in other words, changing how we think about an experience will change how we feel about it. And another 2016, also published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, reported that tinkering with the particulars of a painful memory can even make us intentionally forget it. 

Simply put: Suppose we can completely remove negative memories just by changing the frame. 


Neither is it based on mood. According to Srijitha Das, a psychologist in Dubai: Not only that, but mood plays a role in how you see the world and what you remember. Das says: ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean your memory is all fiction. Things actually did happen, but the way you access and interpret them is based on how you feel. So, if we actively attempt to perceive things in more of a balanced manner, by remembering things in a more positive way, then we can escape the cycle." 


So to reframe a negative memory, we have to change how we read the past, but it can’t be any kind of change that we will choose. And it needs to be possible for us to believe it too, that is all. Ideally, positive realism, as Rico Idris proclaimed. 


This restructuring will reduce psychological suffering and help people forward with a more healthy and positive view of life. It is slow and painful, depending on the intensity and deepness of the interpretations and experiences. 


By studying the human brain, scientists learned how the brain produces and stores memories. Although research needs to be done further, this might in time help neuroscientists and psychologists to find ways to help people forget traumatic memories. Though still very much a baby, the possibility of changing our emotional landscape holds promise for people buried under traumatic memories. Let’s picture a future in which scars are not an option but a solution. 


Wondering if slumber could strip away bad memories? Learn why it works, and how sleeping can soothe your brain. Subscribe to Just Dubai for more news!

By: admin

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