Triggering Positive Memories Can Treat Mental Illness, Mouse Study

Positive memories can help people with depression but summoning them isn't easy. New research on mice has shown how it can be done and how it may benefit humans.

According to BBC, Researchers at Riken-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics engineered mice to have brain cells with triggers that can respond to light. The mice were then allowed to form positive memories. Male mice were given a female companion while researchers labeled the memory making cells.

The mice were subjected to stress by being confined solitarily for a few hours every day for 10 days. When researchers illuminated the memory making cells with pulsing blue light, the mice snapped out of their depression and behaved like control group mice.

To validate their finding that stimulating positive memories can help depressed, researchers gave the depressed mice female company which did not improve their condition.

"The findings have important implications for the persistence of memory in coping with stress and depression. The interaction of positive and negative experiences and their corresponding memories is poorly understood, but the findings open a path to new approaches in mood disorder therapy that might be helpful for patients in the future. The authors say it is too early to conclude whether positive memories in general can mitigate the effects of stressful depression," the authors said in a press release.

The study has been published in the journal Nature.