TY - JOUR
T1 - Sleep as a window to target traumatic memories
AU - van der Heijden, A. C.
AU - van den Heuvel, O. A.
AU - van der Werf, Y. D.
AU - Talamini, L. M.
AU - van Marle, H. J. F.
N1 - Copyright © 2022. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Funding Information: This work was supported by grants from: The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research , The Netherlands: Innovational Research Incentives Scheme Veni Research ( 016.176.130 ); The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development , The Netherlands: Off Road grant ( 91215209 ); Brain & Behavior Research Foundation , United States of America: NARSAD Young Investigator Grant ( 27771 ); EMDR Research Foundation , The Netherlands. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors
PY - 2022/9
Y1 - 2022/9
N2 - Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a severe psychiatric disorder in which traumatic memories result in flashbacks and nightmares. With one-third of patients not responding to standard exposure-based psychotherapy, new treatment strategies are needed. Sleep offers a unique time window to enhance therapeutic efficacy. Traumatic memories that are neutralized in therapy need to be stored back into memory (consolidated) during sleep to solidify the treatment effect. New basic research shows that memory consolidation can be enhanced by presenting sounds or scents that were linked to the memory at encoding, again during sleep. This procedure, termed targeted memory reactivation (TMR), has, despite its clinical potential, not been tested in (PTSD) patients. In this narrative review, we explore the potential of TMR as a new sleep-based treatment for PTSD. First we provide the necessary background on the memory and sleep principles underlying PTSD as well as the present applications and conditional factors of TMR. Then, we will discuss the outstanding questions and most promising experimental avenues when testing TMR to treat traumatic memories.
AB - Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a severe psychiatric disorder in which traumatic memories result in flashbacks and nightmares. With one-third of patients not responding to standard exposure-based psychotherapy, new treatment strategies are needed. Sleep offers a unique time window to enhance therapeutic efficacy. Traumatic memories that are neutralized in therapy need to be stored back into memory (consolidated) during sleep to solidify the treatment effect. New basic research shows that memory consolidation can be enhanced by presenting sounds or scents that were linked to the memory at encoding, again during sleep. This procedure, termed targeted memory reactivation (TMR), has, despite its clinical potential, not been tested in (PTSD) patients. In this narrative review, we explore the potential of TMR as a new sleep-based treatment for PTSD. First we provide the necessary background on the memory and sleep principles underlying PTSD as well as the present applications and conditional factors of TMR. Then, we will discuss the outstanding questions and most promising experimental avenues when testing TMR to treat traumatic memories.
KW - Memory consolidation
KW - PTSD
KW - Sleep
KW - Targeted memory reactivation (TMR)
KW - Treatment
UR - https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85134510698&origin=inward
UR - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35803396
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85134510698&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104765
DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104765
M3 - Review article
C2 - 35803396
SN - 0149-7634
VL - 140
JO - Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
JF - Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
M1 - 104765
ER -