from delancyplace.com

In today's excerpt - memory and fear. The
emotion of each memory is chemically encoded
in the brain's amygdala. And each memory is
changed - chemically
altered - each time we retrieve it, for
better or for worse. Therapists try and use
this in helping patients overcome fears:



"Learned fears [such as stage-fright] are
acquired in part in circuitry centering on
the amygdala, which Joseph LeDoux likes to
call the brain's 'Fear
Central.' LeDoux knows the neural terrain of
the amygdala intimately; he's been studying
this clump of neurons for decades at the
Center for Neural Science at New York
University. The cells in the
amygdala where sensory information registers,
and the adjacent areas that acquire fear,
LeDoux has discovered, actually fire in new
patterns at the moment a fear has been
learned.



"Our memories are in part reconstructions.
Whenever we retrieve a
memory, the brain rewrites it a bit, updating
the past according to
our present concerns and understanding. At
the cellular level,
LeDoux explains, retrieving a memory means it
will be 'reconsolidated,' slightly altered
chemically by a new protein synthesis that
will help store it anew after being
updated.



"Thus each time we bring a memory to mind, we
adjust its very
chemistry: the next time we retrieve it, that
memory will come up
as we last modified it. The specifics of the
new consolidation depend on what we learn as
we recall it. If we merely have a flare-up of
the same fear, we deepen our fearfulness.



"But, ... if at the time of the
fear we tell ourselves something that eases
its grip, then the same
memory becomes reencoded with less power over
us. Gradually, we
can bring the once-feared memory to mind
without feeling the rush
of distress all over again. In such a case,
says LeDoux, the cells in our
amygdala reprogram so that we lose the
original fear conditioning.
One goal of therapy, then, can be seen as
gradually altering the neurons for learned
fear.



"Treatments sometimes actually expose the
person to whatever
primes their fear. Exposure sessions begin
with getting the person
relaxed, often through a few minutes of slow
abdominal breathing.
Then the person confronts the threatening
situation, in a careful
gradation culminating in the very worst
version.



"[For example], one New York City traffic
officer confided that she had flown into a
rage at a motorist who called her a 'low-life
bitch.' So in her exposure
therapy that phrase was repeated to her,
first in a flat tone, then with
increasing emotional intensity, and finally
with added obscene gestures. The exposure
succeeds when, no matter how obnoxious the
repeated phrase, she can stay relaxed - and
presumably when back on
the street she can calmly write a traffic
ticket despite insults."



Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence,
Bantam, Copyright 2006, pp. 78-79.


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