Playing sounds to people while they are asleep can be used to help them to forget or weaken traumatic and intrusive memories, according to a study.
Previous research found that playing sound cues’ during sleep can be used to boost specific memories.
However, the latest study, published in the journal Learning & Memory, provides the first strong evidence that the technique can also be used to help people to forget.
“Although still highly experimental at this stage, the results of our study raise the possibility that we can both increase and decrease the ability to recall specific memories by playing sound cues when an individual is asleep,” said study first author, Bardur Joensen, a former PhD student at the University of York, UK.
“People who have experienced trauma can suffer a wide range of distressing symptoms due to their memories of those events,” Joensen said.
The finding could potentially pave the way for new techniques for weakening those memories that could be used alongside existing therapies, the researchers said. For the study, 29 participants learnt associations between overlapping pairs of words. For example, they were asked to learn the word pairs hammer office’ and hammer Cardi B’.
The participants then slept overnight in the University of York’s sleep lab. The team analysed their brainwaves and when they reached deep or slow-wave sleep they were quietly played the word denoting the object i.e. hammer.
Previous research had found that learning a pair of words, and playing a sound associated with that pair during sleep, improved participants’ memory for the word pair when they woke in the morning.
This time, when the pairs of words were overlapping, they found an increase in memory for one pair, but a decrease in memory for the other pair.
This suggests it is possible to cause selective forgetting by playing associated sounds during sleep.
According to the researchers, sleep played a crucial role in the effects they observed in their study.
The relationship between sleep and memory is fascinating. We know that sleep is critical for memory processing, and our memories are typically better following a period of sleep,” said senior author of the study, Aidan Horner from the University of York. “The exact mechanisms at play remain unclear, but during sleep it seems that important connections are strengthened and unimportant ones are discarded,” Horner said.
This research raises the possibility that this process could be manipulated so that sleep could be used to help weaken painful memories, the researchers added.
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