Using
a combination of artificial intelligence and brain-scanning technology, a team
comprising of researchers from Great Britain, Japan, and the U.S. may have
discovered a way to unconsciously remove specific fear memories.
The
team was led by Dr. Ai Kozumi, from the Advanced Telecommunications Research
Institute International in Kyoto and the Centre of Information and Neural
Networks in Osaka - both in Japan.
The
results were published in the journal Nature
Human Behaviour.
The
team used a new technique called "Decoded Neurofeedback" to read and
identify fear memories. The technique uses brain scanning to monitor brain
activity and identify complex patterns of activity that indicate a fear memory.
Researchers
created fear memories in 17 healthy individuals by administering an electric
shock every time they saw a certain computer image.
Dr.
Ben Seymour, of the Engineering Department at the University of Cambridge in
the United Kingdom and one of the researchers on the team, explains how using
artificial intelligence image recognition enables scientists to recognize the
content of neurological information picked up by brain scanners.
When
they were able to identify the neurological pattern for representing fears,
researchers tried to override the bad memory by giving their subjects a reward.
"We
realized that even when the volunteers were simply resting, we could see brief
moments when the pattern of fluctuating brain activity had partial features of
the specific fear memory, even though the volunteers weren't consciously aware
of it," says Dr. Seymour.
"Because
we could decode these brain patterns quickly, we decided to give subjects a
reward - a small amount of money - every time we picked up these features of
the memory," he continues.
The
team repeated the procedure for 3 days. They told the participants that the
reward depended on their brain activity, but they did not tell them how.
Source:
medicalnewstoday.com
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