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Scientists Find Protein That Indicates Whether Emotional Memories Can be Changed or Forgotten

posted by mrpg on Monday October 04 2021, @03:41PM   
from the proteins,-our-building-blocks dept.

upstart writes:

Scientists Find Protein That Indicates Whether Emotional Memories Can Be Changed or Forgotten:

Researchers have discovered that a particular protein can be used as a brain marker to indicate whether emotional memories can be changed or forgotten. This is a study in animals, but the researchers hope that the findings will eventually allow people suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to return to leading a more balanced life. This work is presented at the ECNP Conference in Lisbon.

Scientists know that long-term memories can broadly be divided into two types: fact-based memory, where we can recall such things as names, places, events, etc., and a sort of instinctive memory where we remember such things as emotions and skills. Scientists have come to believe that these emotional memories can be modified, so perhaps allowing the trauma underlying PTSD to be treated. In 2004 some ground-breaking work by scientists in New York[1] showed that if animals were treated with the beta-blocker propranolol, this allowed them to forget a learned trauma. However, the results have sometimes been difficult to reproduce, leading to doubts about whether the memories were modifiable at all.

Now scientists at Cambridge University have shown that the presence of a particular protein – the "shank" protein, which acts as a scaffold for the receptors that determine the strength of connections between neurons – determines whether the memories can be modified in animals treated with propranolol. If this protein is degraded, then memories become modifiable.[2] However, if this protein is found to be present, then this shows that the memories were not degradable, so explaining why propranolol does not always produce amnesia.

Journal Reference:
Synaptic Protein Degradation Underlies Destabilization of Retrieved Fear Memory, Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1150541)

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Original Submission

• Scene from the not-too-distant future?Scene from the not-too-distant future? (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 04 2021, @04:42PM (3 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 04 2021, @04:42PM (#1184165)

  Eat your protein-coated insect snacks. You have always loved President Biden and you have always loved paying high taxes. .

  • Re:Scene from the not-too-distant future?(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 04 2021, @05:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 04 2021, @05:06PM (#1184174)

    These snacks could help people get over the PTSD of the Trump years. Of course, your typicaly lard-ass American would eat so many that they'd lose all their memories, good or bad.

    Parent

  • Apparently rage-week has fallen into re-runs. (Score: 2) by Tork on Monday October 04 2021, @05:44PM

    by Tork (3914) on Monday October 04 2021, @05:44PM (#1184186) Journal

    Eat your protein-coated insect snacks. You have always loved President Biden and you have always loved paying high taxes. .

    heh "Fake news!" "BDS!!" "biased media!!"

    --
    🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈

    Parent

  • Hopeless optimist(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 04 2021, @10:24PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 04 2021, @10:24PM (#1184299)

    Try "I'm happy to go overseas and spend my life killing brown people for the rich fuckers, without any nightmares!"

    Parent

• nooo(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 04 2021, @07:32PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 04 2021, @07:32PM (#1184212)

  People just need to take Psilocybin Cubensis.

• How about sociopathy?How about sociopathy? (Score: 4, Interesting) by krishnoid on Monday October 04 2021, @09:11PM (3 children)

  by krishnoid (1156) on Monday October 04 2021, @09:11PM (#1184268)

  If these results are reproducible, I'd wonder more if sociopaths/psychopaths (?) are lacking this protein:

  • No emotional memory, means
  • no way for you to retain how something made you feel, means
  • no way to be able to recall that memory when you do something that might make someone *else* feel the same way later
  • or to be able to recognize it when you yourself feel it later, to learn and adjust your behavior over time

  If this is the case, such people wouldn't have strong emotional memories of their own. But maybe "strong" vs "PTSD-threshold strong" are two different things.

  • Re:How about sociopathy?Re:How about sociopathy? (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 05 2021, @10:47PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 05 2021, @10:47PM (#1184567)

    Yeah, that's interesting; perhaps people more susceptible to PTSD type stuff are higher in natural empathy.

    Parent

    • Re:How about sociopathy?Re:How about sociopathy? (Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 06 2021, @03:17AM (1 child)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday October 06 2021, @03:17AM (#1184606) Journal

      That is absolutely the case, and I can confirm it both first and secondhand.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...

      Parent

      • Re:How about sociopathy?(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 09 2021, @02:07PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 09 2021, @02:07PM (#1185767)

        Cause and correlation are indistinct. It may be that trauma induces sensitivity. Citation: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0203886 [plos.org] - adult trauma survivors exhibit enhanced empathy.

        Parent

• You can follow the story in this documentary(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:30PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:30PM (#1184696)

  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338013/ [imdb.com]