Recent studies have confirmed what we have known all along-that people can suppress emotionally troubling memories.  These findings may lead to a way to help patients with post-traumatic stress disorder or anxiety to gain control of debilitating memories.

According to the study, this is achieved by shutting down parts of the brain responsible for supporting memories, as well as the brain's emotional center.

The study was conducted through having volunteers associate pictures of human faces with pictures of car crashes and wounded soldiers.  They were then shown each fact a dozen times and asked to either remember or forget the troubling image associated with each one.  When they worked to block a particular negative picture, then looked at the face one last time, the volunteers could no longer name its troubling pair in about half of the trials.

The look at the brain activity during this study, researchers used a brain imaging method called functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, which shows the brain's activity in real time, tracking what was going on in th brain.

Tests show that parts of the volunteer's prefontal cortex, the brain's control center for complex thoughts and actions, were activated.  Meanwhile, a direct decrease of activity occurred in the visual cortex where images are usually processed.  The hippocampus, where memories are formed and retrieved, and amygdala, the emotion center of the brain, were later also deactivated.

However, this research is still far from being translated as a form of suppression therapy, since the test subjects were given a set of stimuli and not trauma as some critics claimed.  They also say that it would  not be that easy to suppress a memory that is long-standing and personally emotional, such as people with post-traumatic stress disorder who are often troubled for decades by recurring images of a harrowing experience.

What this study suggest is that patients may practice blocking such memories out of their minds, or at least reducing their emotional sting by gaining some control over the memory representation and trying a different emotional response to the memory before successful suppression.