A paradigm shift in the treatment of emotional memory disorders: Lessons from basic science

Experiments demonstrating post-reactivation amnesia for learned fear in animals have generated a novel and influential hypothesis on the plasticity of memory, usually referred to as memory reconsolidation. The clinical potential of pharmacologically disrupting the process of memory reconsolidation has sparked a wave of interest into whether this phenomenon can also be demonstrated in humans, and ultimately harnessed for therapeutic purposes. In this essay we outline how the work of Karim Nader and colleagues has moved the field forward from a focus on extinction learning to the prospect of disrupting memory reconsolidation. We then review some promising findings on the necessary conditions, as well as potential boundary conditions, of pharmacologically disrupting the process of memory reconsolidation obtained in our laboratory. Even though laboratory experiments in animals and humans suggest that we may be at the brink of a breakthrough in fundamentally changing emotional memories, the necessary and sufficient conditions for targeting and disrupting memory reconsolidation in clinical practice are largely unknown. There is likely no universally effective reactivation procedure for triggering the reconsolidation of clinically significant emotional memories, and the impact of subtle boundary conditions observed in basic experiments compounds this issue. Notwithstanding these challenges, the discovery of changing emotional memory through disrupting the process of memory reconsolidation has unquestionably invigorated the field.