According to researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center, working with mice, the natural stress hormone of the human body could prove useful for minimizing the fearful response associated with reliving a traumatic memory.

It was remarked by Dr. Craig Powell, senior author and assistant professor of neurology and psychiatry at UT Southwestern that corticosterone can enhance new memories for competing with the fearful memory in an aim to minimize its negative emotional significance.

From Sciencedaily.com:

“We’re not erasing memories,” said Dr. Robert Greene, professor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern and another author of the study. “What the steroid does is attenuate the fear memory by helping the mice to learn that these contexts should no longer be perceived as dangerous.”

The study is being published online and in the Sept. 13 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

While other researchers have tested such steroids clinically with some success for patients with disorders of emotional memories such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and phobias, those studies did not control for a number of variables and were not designed to address the mechanism of the drug’s action, Dr. Greene said.

This study focused on a mechanism called extinction, in which a memory gradually diminishes, but can be re-established by a small reminder of the original event.

“Our studies show that glucocorticoids work specifically to enhance the extinction of fear memory, as opposed to other mechanisms affecting recall, such as eliminating the memory entirely,” said Dr. Greene. “This provides a proof of principle, and is an essential step in advancing this therapeutic approach.”

The work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the Conte Center, the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.