Science 367, eaay8477 (2020)

People with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have impaired regulation of memory recollection, which may contribute to the disorder.

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It is unclear why in the aftermath of a trauma, some people experience unbidden recollection of memories that occur as part of the disorder and some do not.

To investigate the role that the ability to suppress memory might have in PTSD, a group of researchers based in France studied 102 people exposed to the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks and 73 non-exposed people. They asked the people to suppress new, laboratory-implemented memories. They found that those experiencing PTSD were unable to actively suppress these intrusive memories and that this was linked to a disruption in their memory-control system, as assessed by functional magnetic imaging.