today

LeDoux’s team also confirms the idea that a part of the brain called the amygdala is central to this process — communication between neurons in this part of the brain usually increases when a fearful memory forms, but it decreases in the treated rats. This shows that the fearful memory is actually deleted, rather than simply breaking the link between the memory and a fearful response.

Greg Quirk, a neurophysiologist from Puerto Rico, was quoted by Nature as saying he thinks that psychiatrists working to treat patients with conditions such as PTSD will be encouraged by the step forward.