Escape the past: A cue to forget emotional memories

Directed forgetting manipulations have been repeatedly applied in declarative memory research to investigate intentional, instructed forgetting. We recently developed a novel directed forgetting fear conditioning procedure aimed at examining instructed forgetting of emotional, rather than declarative memories. In a series of studies, we observed a clear memory deficit for items that were instructed to be forgotten, as well as an attenuation of fear expression in relation to those items. This work holds tremendous potential for memory therapeutics, but many questions remain unanswered. This proposal aspires to further investigate directed forgetting of emotional memories, with the ultimate aim of aiding the development of durable, evidence-based therapies for the treatment of emotional disorders.

Keywords:directed forgetting, instructed forgetting, emotional memory, memory modification, fear conditioning

Disciplines:Cognitive processes, Learning and behaviour, Biological psychology, Motivation and emotion