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Medics and psychiatrists see new possibilities of treating people who were traumatised by terrorist attacks, natural disasters or wars. A trial involving human volunteers has given strong support to the theory. A team of Dutch scientists and researchers artificially created a fearful memory by giving 60 participants a light electric shock, delivered to the wrists, every time they saw a picture of a spider. 24 hours later the volunteers were shown the spider pictures again and they had a "startle" response - a measure of fear –which was assessed by testing eye blink reactions. Volunteers turned out to be much less disturbed by the spider pictures after they were shown the pictures. Since the spider fear seen in the initial experiment did not return to treated participants, the effect seems to be permanent. Administering the beta-blocker drug propranolol (normally used to treat high blood pressure) before reactivation of the fearful memory led to a marked reduction in the startle response.
The findin
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(Uva.nl, http://www.telegraaf.nl/, http://www.nu.nl/, Nature Neuroscience magazine)