If you could turn your bad memories into good ones, would you?

Almost everyone has experienced some kind of trauma throughout their lives. For some it is small and for others it is large but regardless of the impact, it leaves lasting memories. That was until scientists discovered a way to reverse bad memories.

A team of neuroscientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States have discovered which brain circuits are responsible for attaching emotions to memories and how to reverse that link.

In testing conducted on mice, scientists identified the brain nerve cells that were activated when the mice created memories of fear and reward. Fear was created by uncomfortable electric shock to the foot and reward being placed in the same house as a female mouse.

The memory was able to be reactivated using pulses of light to trigger the same neurons, bringing up emotions of fear or pleasant reward. The research team was able to alter the wavelength of the light and trigger neurons in the opposite parts of the brain. This technically reverses the emotional impact of the memory.

Roger Redondo, a lead researcher in the study said, “We wanted to know whether the memory… was free to associate with positive or negative [emotion] valences or whether it was fixed with respect to emotion”.

This could be an incredible step in reducing life-long mental illnesses as a result of trauma. Post traumatic stress disorder is something that has sparked the research into this area as more and more support and care is required for sufferers.

There is also hope that this breakthrough could lead to the effective management and treatment of depression and anxiety, however Redondo warned that if the technology can be approved for use on humans, they will be doing everything in their power to avoid it becoming something used on healthy people to alter their cognition for reasons other than treating pathological conditions.

The big question is whether or not people will actually feel comfortable using this kind of treatment therapy. So tell us, would you consider this to treat the effects of a traumatic experience?