Being able to erase bad memories and traumatic flashbacks could help in the treatment of a host of different mental health issues, and scientists have found a promising new approach to do just this: weakening negative memories by reactivating positive ones.
In an experiment covering several days, an international team of researchers asked 37 participants to associate random words with negative images, before attempting to reprogram half of those associations and ‘interfere’ with the bad memories.
“We found that this procedure weakened the recall of aversive memories and also increased involuntary intrusions of positive memories,” write the researchers in their published paper.
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