Fighting phobia formation by blocking scary memories from forming?

This past weekend, I came across this, an article on the Science website about NYU researchers' efforts to extinguish fearful aspects of memories during the "reconsolidation" phase of the memory-recall process. Here's how it worked:

The scientists started by creating a scary memory of a blue square. They flashed blue or yellow squares on a computer screen and gave subjects a slight shock on the wrist when only the blue square appeared. After this training session, just flashing the blue square without a shock put people on edge, which the researchers measured by recording tiny currents that pass through their skin. One day later, the scientists performed extinction training by flashing the blue square repeatedly without any shocks. To trigger reconsolidation, one-third of the subjects got a reminder--a quick flash of the blue square--10 minutes before extinction training. (Reconsolidation normally starts about 3 minutes after a memory gets recalled.) Another third received a reminder 6 hours beforehand--which meant that the extinction training began well past the time when reconsolidation ended--and the final third weren't reminded at all.

When the scientists tested the subjects' response to the blue square a day later, those who received the 10-minute reminder showed no fear, while the other two groups were still freaked out by the shape. Even 1 year later, those subjects who underwent extinction training during reconsolidation still showed no response to the blue squares, while their counterparts retained the fear memory, the scientists report online today in Nature. "Because extinction training happened during [reconsolidation], we think that ... the nature of the memory changed," Phelps says.

Imagine how helpful it would be if you could make it so that a location where you experienced a panic attack does not make you fearful or want to avoid it moving forward. Heck, my career would probably be completely different (and probably more lucrative) if I hadn't had to endure periods of being unable to commute by train or highway. The potential benefits of this research in fighting agoraphobia are exciting.

Is consumer culture making us anxious and depressed?

According to one recent ABC News story, yes, it is:

Margit Burmeister, professor of psychiatry and human genetics at the University of Michigan, said it "makes very good sense with what we know of lifestyle changes in the past 50 years" that our consumer culture is affecting mental illness.

She added that "genetic vulnerability [to mental illness] is the other side of the coin that needs to be kept in mind" -- in other words, as our society piles more and more stress onto its citizens, those who are predisposed to crack under the pressure, will...

Dr. Bruce Rabin, medical director of the Health Lifestyle Program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said that beyond our society's focus on external goals, the stress level among parents in recent times has impacted the type of children we raise.

Children today "lack meaningful, healthy role models," Rabin said.

"They learn from those they love...if role models are short tempered [or] tell children to leave them alone because they are under a lot of stress...there will be an effect on the child's mental health development."

In this way, he said, children learn which aspects of life to make a priority. Relationships take a back seat, and work, success, material gains take precedence.

Lots of statistics speak to the validity of this opinion. There's no question that society is more atomized than it used to be -- that people are more geographically mobile, hold more jobs during their working years, work longer hours but are less likely to make enough money to be able afford to buy a house, and are less likely than they used to be to be part of a strong community. (See the book Bowling Alone for as many statistics along these lines as anyone will ever need.) Thanks to the growth of corporate America, there are more and more cookie-cutter office parks and shopping centers than ever, and fewer and fewer places that are culturally unique or untouched by commercialism. (Thank you, Starbucks.) Television, the internet, and the advertising and public relations industries saturate our lives with images of "the good life" while pushing on us an endless parade of products we don't really need. (Spend some time with the most recent SkyMall catalog if you don't know what I'm talking about.) A society that used to treasure privacy now produces more than a few citizens whose primary life goal is seemingly to land a spot on reality television. (E.g., the attention-whore couple who recently attended a White House function without an invitation.) It's no surprise that recent decades have brought alarming mental illness growth rates.

So what's to do? According to the article, "If increased materialism and decreased community are really to blame -- at least in part -- for this trend ... then interventions may have to be taken at the societal level."

In other words, we're screwed.

More proof that exercise lowers anxiety.

According to a recent New York Times blog post, there's more and more science showing that exercise fights stress and lowers anxiety. For instance, there's a recent Princeton study showing that exercise makes rats' brains biochemically, molecularly calmer. And there's more:

In work undertaken at the University of Colorado, Boulder, for instance, scientists have examined the role of serotonin, a neurotransmitter often considered to be the “happy” brain chemical. That simplistic view of serotonin has been undermined by other researchers, and the University of Colorado work further dilutes the idea. In those experiments, rats taught to feel helpless and anxious, by being exposed to a laboratory stressor, showed increased serotonin activity in their brains. But rats that had run for several weeks before being stressed showed less serotonin activity and were less anxious and helpless despite the stress.

Other researchers have looked at how exercise alters the activity of dopamine, another neurotransmitter in the brain, while still others have concentrated on the antioxidant powers of moderate exercise. Anxiety in rodents and people has been linked with excessive oxidative stress, which can lead to cell death, including in the brain. Moderate exercise, though, appears to dampen the effects of oxidative stress. In an experiment led by researchers at the University of Houston and reported at the Society for Neuroscience meeting, rats whose oxidative-stress levels had been artificially increased with injections of certain chemicals were extremely anxious when faced with unfamiliar terrain during laboratory testing. But rats that had exercised, even if they had received the oxidizing chemical, were relatively nonchalant under stress. When placed in the unfamiliar space, they didn’t run for dark corners and hide, like the unexercised rats. They insouciantly explored.

“It looks more and more like the positive stress of exercise prepares cells and structures and pathways within the brain so that they’re more equipped to handle stress in other forms,” says Michael Hopkins, a graduate student affiliated with the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory Laboratory at Dartmouth.

Why the world looks flat and dull when you're depressed.

Depression makes you see the world differently. Literally. According to a recent New Scientist article, "People with the condition find it easy to interpret large images or scenes, but struggle to 'spot the difference' in fine detail." Why is this so? "Depressed people have a shortage of a neurotransmitter called GABA; this has also been linked to a visual skill called spatial suppression, which helps us suppress details surrounding the object our eyes are focused on - enabling us to pick out a snake in fallen leaves, for instance."

The hope: that visual training may be effective in treating depression. Hey, another tool certainly can't hurt.