A drug can improve the effectiveness of a behavioural treatment for fearful memories, at least in mice.
Long-term memories of traumatic events, which can result in anxiety disorders, are difficult to treat, in part because they leave epigenetic, or chemical, marks in the genome. Li-Huei Tsai at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and her colleagues tested an HDAC inhibitor, a drug that clears epigenetic markers, on mice that were conditioned to freeze in fear when they heard a loud sound. Conditioned mice given the drug, and then exposed to the sound in a safe environment, froze much less frequently than mice that did not receive the drug. The inhibitor made it easier to replace the bad memory with a less fearful one by changing the expression of the genes involved in rewiring the brain, the authors say.
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Drugs help to dull bad memories. Nature 505, 457 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/505457a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/505457a