2011 Postgraduate Research Competition - UNSW Science - The ...

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Erasing traumatic memories
Wan Yee Chan and Gavan McNally
School of Psychology
Abstract
Disorders of fear and anxiety impose a significant burden on individual sufferers, their families,
and communities. Existing treatments for such anxiety are effective but anxiety is prone to
relapse after treatment. There is a pressing need for new approaches to treat anxiety and to
reduce relapse following such treatment. One such approach is to exploit the recent finding
that memories are continuously being destabilized, updated, and reconsolidated.
Approaches which augment traumatic memory destabilization or interfere with
reconsolidation may cause that memory to be lost forever. These approaches will produce a
fear loss which is more long lasting and less sensitive to relapse. The research presented here
addressed this possibility in three experiments using an animal model for the treatment of fear
and anxiety. The results show that destabilizing a fear memory prior to fear reduction
treatment produces a deeper or greater fear loss than is observed when fear reduction
treatments are conducted in the absence of such destabilization. These findings suggest that
memory destabilization and reconsolidation processes may be useful targets in the
development of novel approaches to treat anxiety and fear.
Social Cognitive Deficits in Schizophrenia:
A Psychophysiological Examination of Potential
Underlying Mechanisms
Abstract
Kandice Varcin, Julie Henry and Simon Killcross
School of Psychology
Social cognition broadly refers to the means by which individuals perceive, interpret and
process information in social contexts. In schizophrenia, social-cognitive impairment is a
replicable finding, and has been linked to poor social functioning. These social difficulties are
largely refractory to pharmacological intervention and are amongst the most disabling
features of this disorder. It is therefore important to delineate the mechanisms underlying
social-cognitive abnormalities in this group in order to identify appropriate targets for
remediation. In non-clinical individuals, the tendency to spontaneously and rapidly
synchronise facial expressions with observed expressions has been consistently linked to
social-cognitive function. By using facial electromyography (a sensitive measure of subtle
changes in facial muscle activity), my research was the first to show that individuals with
schizophrenia do not demonstrate this rapid facial mimicry response (Varcin, Bailey & Henry,
2010). My research has also demonstrated that rapid facial mimicry is not a mere motormatching
response (whereby observing a facial expression automatically elicits a matching
muscular response); instead, my research has shown that rapid facial reactions reflect
emotional processes (Varcin, Henry, Bailey, & Richmond, submitted). Taken together, these
findings suggest that disrupted rapid emotional responding may be one mechanism
contributing to social-cognitive impairment in schizophrenia.
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