People struggling to forget painful past memories can be trained to do so, claims a new study that may offer new potential for the tre-atment of disorders like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The research by a team at the University of St Andrews in Scotland showed that though individuals could accurately recall the cause of the traumatic event, they could be trained to forget the consequences and personal meaning associated with that memory.
Dr Saima Noreen, who led the research, said: “The ability to remember and interpret emotional events from our personal past forms the basic foundation of who we are as individuals.”
“These novel findings show that individuals can be trained to not think about memories that have personal relevance and significance to them and provide the most direct evidence to date that we possess some kind of control over autobiographical memory,” Dr Noreen was quoted by the Daily Mail.
The research involved participants generating emotional memories in response to cue words, such as theatre, barbeque, and wildlife. Part-icipants were asked to recall the cause of the event, the consequence of the event and the personal meaning they derived from it. Subjects were then asked to provide a word that was personal to them which reminded them of the memory. Then, participants were shown the cue and personal word pairings and were asked to either recall the memory or to not think about the associated memory.