Brain areas for remote fear extinction
© 2018 EPFL
Recently published study identifies brain areas responsible for storing and extinguishing long-lasting traumatic memories.
In a recently published paper, Bianca Silva, Allison Burns and Johannes Gräff identify brain regions implicated in the storage of 30d-old traumatic memories, as well as in their attenuation. While previous papers had already alluded to former, the latter have never been investigated. Remote memory recall and extinction share more commonalities in brain activation than expected, which speaks of a concerted, if not similar mode of action of these regions during memory attenuation. These findings are important to better understand treatment options for long-lasting traumata.