A Case for Translation From the Clinic to the Laboratory

Memory engram stability and flexibility

Many studies have shown that memories are encoded in sparse neural ensembles distributed across the brain. During the post-encoding period, often during sleep, many of the cells that were active during encoding are reactivated, supporting consolidation of this memory. During memory recall, many of the same cells that were active during encoding and reactivated during consolidation are reactivated during recall. These ensembles of cells have been referred to as the memory engram cells, stably representing a specific memory. However, recent studies question the rigidity of the "stable memory engram." Here we review the past literature of how episodic-like memories are encoded, consolidated, and recalled. We also highlight more recent studies (as well as some older literature) that suggest that these stable memories and their representations are much more dynamic and flexible than previously thought. We highlight some of these processes, including memory updating, reconsolidation, forgetting, schema learning, memory-linking, and representational drift.

Fear, learning, and the amygdala: a personal reflection in honor of Joseph LeDoux

In honor of Joseph LeDoux's retirement from an illustrious career in science, I offer a personal reflection on how my graduate training experiences in his lab shaped my subsequent career trajectory and the development of my views on human amygdala function and the scientific enterprise. I discuss the values of openness to scientific exploration and of multi-methodological integration, both of which distinguished his laboratory over the years. I highlight the unique historical context in which the lab's foundational discoveries on the emotional brain occurred and the importance of embracing new technologies to advance an understanding of brain-behavior relationships in affective neuroscience.

Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback Intervention Programme to Improve Attention in Primary Schools

The importance of attentional capacity for academic performance is highlighted by the increasing demands placed on students during primary school. Between the ages of 7 and 12, there is an evolutionary improvement in attentional capacity and the school environment is considered an appropriate setting in which to develop programmes to improve attention. Heart rate variability is an appropriate indicator of attentional capacity. For all these reasons, a heart rate variability biofeedback intervention focused on breathing was developed and implemented to improve attention. The intervention consisted of two phases. In the first phase, the school teachers were trained to develop the intervention; in the second, students received five individual sessions from their teachers. In each individual session, they learned to breathe to increase their heart rate variability. A total of 272 girls and 314 boys (N = 586) aged 7-12 years participated in the programme. To study the impact of the intervention on three primary school age groups, the attention of Control and Experimental groups was assessed before and after the implementation of the programme. According to the data obtained, despite developmental improvements, the students who participated in the programme showed an increase in heart rate variability and an improvement in attentional capacity, with a greater impact on the first cycle of primary school. The usefulness of heart rate variability biofeedback interventions in improving attention in primary school is discussed and arguments for their use in children are presented.

Extinction and beyond: an expanded framework for exposure and response prevention for obsessive-compulsive disorder

Exposure therapy is a first-line, empirically validated treatment for anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, and trauma-related disorders. Extinction learning is the predominant theoretical framework for exposure therapy, whereby repeated disconfirmation of a feared outcome yields fear reduction over time. Although this framework has strong empirical support and substantial translational utility, extinction learning is unlikely to be the sole process underlying the therapeutic effects of exposure therapy. In our clinic, we commonly treat obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients successfully with exposure therapy even when some or all of their feared outcomes are not amenable to disconfirmation and, by extension, to extinction learning. Herein, we present a generic clinical vignette illustrating a commonly encountered feared outcome in OCD that cannot be disconfirmed through exposure (damnation resulting from blasphemous thoughts). We describe two specific non-extinction-based strategies we commonly employ in such cases, and we associate these strategies with known change mechanisms that might account for their effectiveness: (1) non-associative habituation to aversive stimuli, and (2) fear-memory elicitation and subsequent reconsolidation. We discuss the limitations inherent in the reverse-translational approach taken and its opportunities for expanding the framework of exposure therapy.

The working mechanisms of imagery rescripting and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing: Findings from a randomised controlled trial

We studied the mechanisms of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) and imagery rescripting (ImRs). We hypothesized that EMDR works via changes in memory vividness, that ImRs works via changes in encapsulated beliefs (EB), and that both treatments work via changes in memory distress. Patients (N = 155) with childhood-related posttraumatic stress disorder (Ch-PTSD) received 12 sessions of EMDR or ImRs. The vividness, distress, and EB related to the index trauma were measured with the Imagery Interview. PTSD severity was assessed with the Impact of Events Scale-Revised and the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5. We conducted mixed regressions and Granger causality analyses. EMDR led to initially stronger changes in all predictors, but only for distress this was retained until the last assessment. No evidence for vividness as a predictive variable was found. However, changes in distress and EB predicted changes in PTSD severity during ImRs. These findings partially support the hypothesized mechanisms of ImRs, while no support was found for the hypothesized mechanisms of EMDR. Differences in the timing of addressing the index trauma during treatment and the timing of assessments could have influenced the findings. This study provides insight into the relative effectiveness and working mechanisms of these treatments.

How Do Psychology Professors View the Relation Between Scientific Knowledge and Its Applicability and Societal Relevance?

How do researchers in psychology view the relation between scientific knowledge, its applicability, and its societal relevance? Most research on psychological science and its benefits to society is discussed from a bird's eye view (a meta-scientific perspective), by identifying general trends such as psychology's dominant focus on lab-based experiments and general descriptive theories. In recent years, several critics have argued that this focus has come at the cost of reduced practical and societal relevance. In this study, we interviewed Dutch psychology professors to gauge their views about the relation between psychological research and its relevance to society. We found that psychology professors engaged in a variety of activities to engage science with society, from work in clinical and applied settings, to consultancy, education, and science communication. However, we found that the role of theory when applying scientific knowledge to practical problems is far from straightforward. While most participants regarded theories as relevant to understanding general contexts of application, psychological theories were seldom directly related to specific applications. We compare and discuss our findings in the light of recent discussions about the lack of applicability and societal relevance of psychological science.

Context reexposure to bolster contextual dependency of emotional episodic memory

Contextual overgeneralization of emotional memory is a core aspect of anxiety disorders. Identifying methods to enhance contextual dependency of emotional memory is therefore of significant clinical interest. Animal research points to a promising approach: reexposure to the context in which fear is acquired reduces generalization to other contexts. However, the exact conditions for this effect are unknown, complicating translation to effective interventions. Most notably, exposure to a context that resembles-but is not identical to-the learning context may diminish contextual dependency of memory by integration of additional contextual cues. Here, we therefore assessed in a large-scale study (N = 180) whether context reexposure enhances contextual dependency of emotional episodic memory whereas exposure to a similar context impairs it. We also tested whether relatively strong memory retrieval during context (re)exposure amplifies these effects. We replicated prior research showing that correct recognition depends on context and contextual dependency is lower for emotional than neutral memories. However, exposure to the encoding context or a similar context did not affect contextual dependency of memory, and retrieval strength did not interact with such effects. Thorough insight into factors underlying the effects of context (re)exposure on contextual dependency seems key to eventually attain a memory recontextualization intervention.

Emotion regulation from an action-control perspective

Despite increasing interest in emotional processes in cognitive science, theories on emotion regulation have remained rather isolated, predominantly focused on cognitive regulation strategies such as reappraisal. However, recent neurocognitive evidence suggests that early emotion regulation may involve sensorimotor control in addition to other emotion-regulation processes. We propose an action-oriented view of emotion regulation, in which feedforward predictions develop from action-selection mechanisms. Those can account for acute emotional-action control as well as more abstract instances of emotion regulation such as cognitive reappraisal. We argue the latter occurs in absence of overt motor output, yet in the presence of full-blown autonomic, visceral, and subjective changes. This provides an integrated framework with testable neuro-computational predictions and concrete starting points for intervention to improve emotion control in affective disorders.

Approximating exposure therapy in the lab: Replacing the CS+ with a similar versus a different stimulus and including additional stimuli resembling the CS+ during extinction

Recent studies have shown that extinction training including the conditional stimulus (CS+) and stimuli that are similar to the CS + enhances extinction retention and generalisation to novel stimuli. However, in a clinical setting, the CS+ is rarely available for use during exposure therapy. The aim of the present study was to determine if replacing the CS+ with a similar versus different stimulus, and including other similar stimuli during extinction, could reduce fear at test on par with extinction using the original CS+ with and without other similar stimuli. In an experiment conducted in a single session, participants completed a habituation phase followed by an acquisition phase using two dog images presented with (CS+) and without (CS-) an acoustic unconditional stimulus (US). Participants were randomly allocated to four extinction conditions: similar CS + dog with novel dog images (Similar replacement extinction condition); different CS + dog with novel dog images (Different replacement extinction condition); original CS + dog with novel dog images (Multiple extinction control condition); and original CS + without novel dog images (Standard extinction control condition). All participants completed a test phase with the original CSs followed by a generalisation test with another two novel dog images. All groups acquired, and then extinguished differential skin conductance responses (SCRs) with no differences observed between groups. Whereas the Similar replacement extinction group and the Multiple and Standard extinction control groups did not exhibit significant differential SCRs when re-exposed to the original CS + relative to the CS- at test, differential responding to the CSs was significant at test in the Different replacement extinction group. There were no significant differences between groups in SCRs to the two novel dog images during the generalisation phase and in between-phase subjective ratings. Findings suggest that replacement stimuli used during extinction should be as similar as possible to the CS + to reduce physiological arousal to the original CS+.

A tetrahedral model of autobiographical memory research design

The field of autobiographical memory can do more to be representative of global populations experiencing and recollecting diverse events across the lifespan. To inspire such work, I present a general model for designing autobiographical memory studies. The tetrahedral model (based on Jenkins, 1979) has at its vertices context (e.g., the situated environment, activated schema, or functional goal), outcomes (e.g., the content and phenomenology of remembering), participants (e.g., the demographic characteristics and traits of the individual), and events (e.g., the lived experiences that comprise an individual's autobiography). Further, the area of the base of the pyramid can represent the time frame under investigation (e.g., the wider the distance, the greater the delay between an experience and its retrieval) and the height of the pyramid can represent the sample size (e.g., nearly flat for a case study, increasingly taller for larger groups) being studied. After applying the model to describe how typical autobiographical memory research is conducted (and briefly identifying the limitations therein), representative models of particularly promising areas of research are highlighted. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Memory.

A court ruled case on therapy-induced false memories

We report on a unique Italian criminal case in which a court ruled that a therapist implanted false memories of abuse in a young girl. Using therapeutic excerpts, we show that the therapist used a multitude of problematic interventions that are all linked to false memory creation. Specifically, an analysis of the therapeutic excerpts showed that across many sessions, the therapist asked highly suggestive questions to the girl, implying that she was abused by her father. In addition, the girl underwent EMDR techniques that have been associated with memory undermining effects. Our analyses showed that although before treatment the girl did not have any recollection of being abused by her father, she gradually started to remember the abuse and identified the father as her abuser during the therapeutic sessions. Our case report clearly shows the danger of suggestive pressure in a therapeutic context causing patients to form false memories of abuse and supports the need to prevent the therapeutic practice of suggestive techniques.