Preventing and treating PTSD-like memory by trauma contextualization

Alice Shaam Al Abed, Eva Gunnel Ducourneau, Chloé Bouarab, Azza Sellami, Aline Marighetto, Aline Desmedt*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    34 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterized by emotional hypermnesia on which preclinical studies focus so far. While this hypermnesia relates to salient traumatic cues, partial amnesia for the traumatic context can also be observed. Here, we show in mice that contextual amnesia is causally involved in PTSD-like memory formation, and that treating the amnesia by re-exposure to all trauma-related cues cures PTSD-like hypermnesia. These findings open a therapeutic perspective based on trauma contextualization and the underlying hippocampal mechanisms.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number4220
    JournalNature Communications
    Volume11
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2020

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