For many patients with phobias, typical treatment involves gradual exposure to the feared object or situation. But researchers have now found that emotional memory can be manipulated during sleep, paving the way to new phobia treatments as we dream.
The researchers, from Northwestern University, published the results of their study in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
They note that previous projects have demonstrated spatial learning and motor sequence learning can be strengthened during sleep, but until now, emotional memory has never been manipulated during slumber.
In the study, the researchers gave 15 healthy volunteers mild electric shocks while two different faces were presented to them. The volunteers also smelled different odorants - such as clove, new sneaker or mint - while looking at each face and being shocked.
This linked the face and the smells with fear for the volunteers, say the researchers.
As the subjects were sleeping, one of the odorants was released, but this time the faces and shocks were absent. The researchers released the odorant during slow wave sleep, which is when they say "memory consolidation" occurs.
Katherine Hauner, from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, says:
"While this particular odorant was being presented during sleep, it was reactivating the memory of that face over and over again, which is similar to the process of fear extinction during exposure therapy."
After the subjects awoke, they were then shown both faces. However, when presented with the face linked to the odor they smelled during sleep, their fear levels were lower than when the saw the other face.
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