Memory Reconsolidation: How the Brain Unlearns

Inefficient Attentional Control Explains Verbal-Memory Deficits Among Military Veterans With Posttraumatic Reexperiencing Symptoms

“…Given the lack of associations between repetition priming and PTSD, the functioning of implicit verbal processes may not be critical for explaining recovery after trauma. This interpretation is thematically consistent with theorizing about the mechanisms of action of psychotherapies (Ecker et al, 2012; Neimeyer, 2002; Park & Ai, 2006; Schnyder et al, 2015; Steger & Park, 2012). Passive and repetitive exposure to trauma content may bring about only short-term emotional habituation.…”

A Randomized-Controlled Trial of EMDR Flash Technique on Traumatic Symptoms, Depression, Anxiety, Stress, and Life of Quality With Individuals Who Have Experienced a Traffic Accident

“…Accordingly, during the processing period, the Flash Technique aims to prioritize memory while excluding details and discomfort from conscious awareness ( Manfield et al, 2021 ). Besides the hypotheses on the need for the existence of a contradictory experience to reconsolidate the trauma, it can be seen that the effect mechanism of the EMDR Flash Technique is quite robust considering its ability to process both positive and negative memories simultaneously ( Ecker et al, 2012 ). On the other hand, Adaptive Information Processing is activated during the application of EMDR Flash Technique, which explains the logic of trauma processing in EMDR Therapy ( Shapiro and Forrest, 2001 ).…”

A proposal for the unification of psychotherapeutic action understood as memory modification processes.

“…For example, the expectation of an electric shock coming some seconds after seeing a certain visual cue-which had been so real feeling and visceral as to induce physiologically measurable fear-completely disappears, and so does the fear, and both remain abolished without any preventive measures. In the therapeutic context, these effects have been termed the markers of transformational change (Ecker & Bridges, 2020;Ecker et al, 2012Ecker et al, , 2024Ecker & Toomey, 2008), defined as follows:…”

“…… "An experience that could effectively serve to create disconfirmation and transformational change fails to do so if the target learning is not concurrently reactivated." (Ecker, 2018, p. 64) Based on both the empirical research findings and decades of clinical observations of the MR unlearning process producing transformational PSYCHOTHERAPY UNIFIED BY MEMORY MODIFICATION MODES change, my colleagues and I have conjectured that (a) transformational therapeutic change is always the result of the MR unlearning process, whatever therapeutic procedures are used to facilitate it, and (b) therefore it should be possible to detect the three distinct steps of that process in all published clinical cases that report the unambiguous markers of transformational change and document the therapeutic process in detail (Ecker, 2018;Ecker & Bridges, 2020;Ecker et al, 2012Ecker et al, , 2024. That exercise is well underway and, as of this writing, has shown detection of the unlearning sequence in cases from 13 different systems of therapy, including a case of bodywork with entirely nonverbal, somatic methodology, specifically the Alexander technique (Ticic & Kushner, 2015); see https://bit.ly/15Z00HQ for a growing list of these systems and citations for the published detections of the MR unlearning process.…”

“…Paraphrasing Ecker et al (2012Ecker et al ( , 2024, imagine several leading practitioners of various psychotherapy systems in a panel discussion focused on describing how their diverse therapeutic methodologies operate in terms of mnemonic therapeutic action. The panelists' mapping of their methodologies onto MTAU modes of memory modification would create a shared, empirically based frame of reference and a shared vocabulary, allowing them to discuss their methods in a manner meaningful to each other and to practitioners of yet other clinical systems.…”