Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may develop due to an earthquake or war. Patients with PTSD suffer from traumatic memory flashbacks and nightmares.Cognitive-behavioral therapy, which aims to overcome traumatic memory by facing traumatic memory over time and getting used to fear, has been used for the treatment, but the problem is that the patient's mental burden is heavy.
Associate Professor Masanori Sakaguchi of the University of Tsukuba and his colleagues suspected that traumatic memory could be weakened during sleep from previous studies that dreams are involved in the processing of memory during sleep.
The research group used mice that were given an electric shock while listening to specific sounds in the experiment.The mouse then becomes frightened by just hearing a sound.However, after hearing the same sound during sleep, it was found that the frightened reaction when hearing the sound diminished.
Furthermore, we compared the effects of REM sleep and non-REM sleep, and found that the frightened response was weakened only when the sound was heard during non-REM sleep.
This study shows that treatment during sleep may reduce traumatic memory without causing pain to patients with PTSD.Further elucidation is expected for the development of new therapeutic methods as to what kind of mechanism in the brain this is due to.
Paper information: [Scientific Reports] Auditory conditioned stimulus presentation during NREM sleep impairs fear memory in mice
