Memory Reconsolidation

In Unlocking the Emotional Brain, authors Ecker, Ticic, and Hulley equip readers to carry out focused, empathic therapy using the potent process of memory reconsolidation, the recently discovered and only known process for actually unlocking emotional memory at the synaptic level. The Routledge classic edition includes a new preface from the authors describing the book’s widespread impact on psychotherapy since its initial publication. Emotional memory's tenacity is the familiar bane of therapists, and researchers had long believed that emotional memory forms indelible learning. Reconsolidation has overturned these views. It allows new learning to truly nullify, not just suppress, the deep, intensely problematic emotional learnings that form, outside of awareness, during childhood or in later tribulations and generate most of the symptoms that bring people to therapy. Readers will learn methods that precisely eliminate unwanted, ingrained emotional responses—whether moods, behaviors, or thought patterns—causing no loss of ordinary narrative memory, while restoring clients' well-being. Numerous case examples show the versatile use of this process in AEDP, coherence therapy, EFT, EMDR, and IPNB.

As little as 10 years ago, it was believed that memory went from short to long term via one consolidation practice that made that memory intractable. Since then, research has shown that long-term memories can be activated, modified, and reconsolidated in their new form. This research indicates that memories are more dynamic than once believed. And understanding how this process works and helping people to redefine established memories can be clinically useful if those memories lead to problems, as is the case in post-traumatic stress disorder. This book provides a comprehensive overview of research on memory reconsolidation; what this has to say about the formation, storage, and changeability of memory; and the potential applications of this research to treating clinical disorders. Presents both neuroscience and psychological research on memory reconsolidation Discusses what findings mean for understanding memory formation, storage, and retrieval Includes treatment applications of these findings

This edited volume provides an overview the state-of-the-art in the field of cognitive neuroscience of memory consolidation. In a number of sections, the editors collect contributions of leading researchers . The topical focus lies on current issues of interest such as memory consolidation including working and long-term memory. In particular, the role of sleep in relation to memory consolidation will be addressed. The target audience primarily comprises research experts in the field of cognitive neuroscience but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.

Memory reconsolidation (MR)—a foundational process with the potential, if properly understood, to consistently bring about the kind of transformational change that we look for in the lives of clients—is the subject of this book. Featured in this issue is Bruce Ecker, one of the foremost experts in applying techniques that fulfil the neurobiological requirements to achieve MR in clinical practice. In fact all of the authors in this issue are experts in their respective fields, demonstrating the unifying nature of MR in such diverse therapies as the Alexander technique, energy psychology, neuro-linguistic programming, and progressive counting. Understanding the biological basis of our memory and how it can be modified is the key to effective therapeutic change, especially when emotional memories are driving unwanted symptoms.The content of this special issue has been previously published in The Neuropsychotherapist or the International Journal of Neuropsychotherapy.

An argument that individuals and collectives form memories by analogous processes and a case study of collective retrograde amnesia. We form individual memories by a process known as consolidation: the conversion of immediate and fleeting bits of information into a stable and accessible representation of facts and events. These memories provide a version of the past that helps us navigate the present and is critical to individual identity. In this book, Thomas Anastasio, Kristen Ann Ehrenberger, Patrick Watson, and Wenyi Zhang propose that social groups form collective memories by analogous processes. Using facts and insights from neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, and history, they describe a single process of consolidation with analogous—not merely comparable—manifestations on any level, whether brain, family, or society. They propose a three-in-one model of memory consolidation, composed of a buffer, a relator, and a generalizer, all within the consolidating entity, that can explain memory consolidation phenomena on individual and collective levels. When consolidation is disrupted by traumatic injury to a brain structure known as the hippocampus, memories in the process of being consolidated are lost. In individuals, this is known as retrograde amnesia. The authors hypothesize a "social hippocampus" and argue that disruption at the collective level can result in collective retrograde amnesia. They offer the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) as an example of trauma to the social hippocampus and present evidence for the loss of recent collective memory in mainland Chinese populations that experienced the Cultural Revolution.

This chapter highlights the connections between research on memory reconsolidation and central ideas in memory research, considering the substantial body of work produced within the neurosciences as well as cognitive psychology–two fields that, at the beginning of our science in the past century, were not as separated as they are now. We advance the basic idea that the reconsolidation phenomenon indicates that memory systems are inherently flexible, based on processes that constantly adapt existing memory representations to improve behavioral performance. These mechanisms are likely of meta-plastic nature, and they will play out on the levels of cognition and behavior. We discuss possible meta-plastic mechanisms that mediate reconsolidation. We then briefly discuss how reconsolidation might explain certain cognitive memory malleability phenomena, such as the misinformation effect and memory interference.

Memory reconsolidation is the process that serves to restabilize a memory that has been destabilized through memory retrieval. This retrieval-induced plasticity has been extensively studied in the hippocampus, among other neural loci. A focus on hippocampal memory reconsolidation, for contextual fear, pure contextual, and spatial memories, reveals interesting constraints on when a retrieved memory undergoes reconsolidation. Moreover, the emergence of dissociable mechanisms of hippocampal contextual fear memory consolidation and reconsolidation has allowed the demonstration that reconsolidation serves to update both the strength and the content of hippocampal memories. This provides compelling evidence that, at least in the hippocampus, reconsolidation exists in order to modify memories. However, whether or not these hippocampal findings can be generalized to nonhippocampal memories remains to be determined.

In contrast to the study of memory reconsolidation in animals, research in humans is still in the early stages. This reflects the challenge to directly target memory reconsolidation without the use of pharmacological interventions that are often not safe for humans. Most studies therefore use paradigms in which new material is presented soon after memory reactivation. These studies show that human memories can be modified contingent upon their reactivation. Specifically, the novel material leads to interference in the original memories. This chapter reviews research on episodic memory reconsolidation that uses this approach in an object-learning paradigm. Learning a new set of objects after reactivation of a previous object-set memory causes the new objects to become integrated into the reactivated memory. We present studies that assess different types of reminders and the effects of memory strength and time delays, and we evaluate different theoretical accounts of our findings.