A study found out that the body’s own natural stress hormone can help lastingly decrease the fearful response associated with reliving a traumatic memory. Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have worked with mice to determine if corticosterone can alleviate traumatic memories.

The mice that underwent days of mild electric shock, which served as a traumatic event, still showed a fearful response when re-exposed to the place where it happened, a condition that could be a model for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in humans. But mice receiving the hormone corticosterone at the time they relived the event experienced a significant drop in that fear.

From Bio-Medicine:

“We’re not erasing memories,” said Dr. Robert Greene, professor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern and another author of the study. “What the steroid does is attenuate the fear memory by helping the mice to learn that these contexts should no longer be perceived as dangerous.”

This study focused on a mechanism called extinction, in which a memory gradually diminishes, but can be re-established by a small reminder of the original event.

“Our studies show that glucocorticoids work specifically to enhance the extinction of fear memory, as opposed to other mechanisms affecting recall, such as eliminating the memory entirely,” said Dr. Greene. “This provides a proof of principle, and is an essential step in advancing this therapeutic approach.”

Corticosterone appears to enhance new memories that compete with the fearful memory thereby decreasing its negative emotional significance. When an animal or human is exposed to or relives an aversive scenario, a process called extinction creates a competing memory.

A UT Southwestern study is now in collaboration with the Dallas VA Medical Center with veterans suffering from PTSD to see if receiving a stress hormone while reliving their memories can reduce their disabling fear responses to their traumatic memories.

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