Brain Strain
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The discovery by Dr Louise Faber and Professor Pankaj Sah, from UQ’s Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), paves the way for new strategies to treat a variety of disorders such as panic attacks, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression.
The researchers have been studying how cells in the brain form memories, and how the memory of emotions, such as fear and anxiety, are stored.
Professor Sah said strong emotions could affect memories. For example if someone was sitting on a train listening to a piece of music before the train crashed.
“The next time the person heard that song, it could bring back, in very vivid detail, that event and all the negative emotions that they associate with the crash,” Professor Sah said.Dr Faber said they were looking at the amygdala in the brain, which mediates emotion and is believed to be the source of mental disorders which occur when there is a malfunction in the way information is processed.
“In particular, fearful memories underlying disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety, are thought to be mediated by long-term changes in the strength of connections between cells in the amygdala,” Dr Faber said.
