What’s the News: Retrieving a memory in your brain is a bit like taking an old keepsake off the shelf. If you get startled while holding grandma’s old vase in your hands, you could drop and break it. Memory retrieval is just as vulnerable to disruption, and scientists have tried to exploit this fact to erase PTSD-associated memories with drugs.
A new study in Science tries a different tack, using a behavioral approach to rid people of addictions to drugs. Addiction is sometimes treated with “extinction,” which means showing patients drug-related images while they’re off drugs, so that, for example, they stop associating needles with a high. The researchers found that retrieving drug memories right before an extinction session—basically, giving them a short exposure to drug-related stimulus, followed by a similar but longer exposure session—made the treatment more effective in both rats and humans.