Ethics

Reiner on Therapeuting Forgetting

By Adam Kolber

Former guest blogger Peter Reiner writes here about recent research (making headlines all over the place) showing how extinction training can be particularly effective when done soon after a disturbing experience.

Peter notes that extinction training is a behavioral technique to address upsetting memories rather than a pharmaceutical technique.  Here's how he concludes:

But the interesting question from the perspective of neuroethics is this: does it really make the process of therapeutic forgetting any less worrisome when the manipulation is behavioural rather than pharmacological?  I would suggest that many people would say yes.   Certainly the issue of safety is sidestepped, but I suspect that this is not the essence of most people?s concerns.  Rather, I believe that we have an aversion to using chemicals to manipulate our brains (except for hedonist pursuits that fall under the umbrella of recreational drug use) while we seem rather comfortable with manipulating our brains by behavioural measures.  One plausible hypothesis is that the behavioral manipulation somehow seems more natural to us.  But as any keen observer of neuroscience knows (and indeed, as the reconsolidation hypothesis demonstrates), every experience that we have changes the underlying chemical makeup of our brains. So is it so different after all?

I suspect Peter is right about the following two claims that I think are implicit in his analysis: (1) people tend to recognize big differences in the appropriate uses of behavioral interventions and pharmaceutical interventions and (2) on careful examination, one would be hard pressed to justify such differences.

Full post as published by Neuroethics and Law on December 15, 2009 (boomark / email).