Forget It! A Biochemical Pathway For Blocking Your Worst Fears?
A receptor for glutamate, the most prominent neurotransmitter in the brain, plays a key role in the process of “unlearning,” report researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies….
“Most studies focus on ‘learning,’ but the ‘unlearning’ process is probably just as important and much less understood,” says Stephen F. Heinemann, Ph.D., a professor in the Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory, who led the study. “Most people agree that failure to ‘unlearn’ is a hallmark of post-traumatic stress disorders and if we had a drug that affects this gene it could help soldiers coming back from the war to ‘unlearn’ their fear memories….”
Heinemann and his team were particularly interested in whether mGluR5, short for metabotropic glutamate receptor 5, which had been shown to be involved in several forms of behavioral learning, also plays a role in inhibitory learning. “Inhibitory learning is thought to be a parallel learning mechanism that requires the acquisition of new information as well as the suppression of previously acquired experiences to be able to adapt to novel situations or environments,” says Heinemann.
