The neurons that rewrite traumatic memories

Neuroscientists at EPFL have located the cells that help reprogram long-lasting memories of traumatic experiences towards safety, a first in neuroscience. Memories of traumatic experiences can lead to mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can destroy a person's life. It is currently estimated that almost a third of all people will suffer from fearor stress-related disorders at one point in their lives. Now, a new study shows - at the cellular level - how therapy can treat even long-term memories of trauma. "Our findings shed, for the first time, light onto the processes that underlie the successful treatment of traumatic memories," says EPFL Professor Johannes Gräff of EPFL's School of Life Sciences, whose lab carried out the study. In the field of treating traumatic memories there has been a long-debated question of whether fear attenuation involves the suppression of the original memory trace of fear by a new memory trace of safety or the rewriting of the original fear trace towards safety. Part of the debate has to do with the fact that we still don't understand exactly how neurons store memories in general.