Do you want to see your memories?

Thanks for posting that, Kizaa! It's exciting stuff.

I completely agree that it is connected to TMS. Learning is so important to TMS because learning is what makes us who we are. All of the things that we struggle with are, to some extent, the result of learning. Therefore, healing has a lot to do with learning as well.

On the forum, we often talk about the old Cherokee story of the two wolves, where the one that you feed is the one that grows. (Here are some old thoughts on that story.) This story teaches us that if we keep rehearsing anger, then we become angry and if we keep rehearsing authentic forgiveness, then we become forgiving. Whatever wolf we feed is the one that grows.

From a neuroscience perspective, this is related to the idea that "neurons that fire together will wire together." In other words, connections that we review again and again throughout our lives get stronger and stronger. Essentially,

being anxious every day = feeding the wolf of anxiety = anxiety nerve pathways fire​

As a result,

we become more prone to anxiety = the wolf of anxiety wins = the anxiety nerve pathways get stronger​

Anyway, the above video appears to show this in action. From the press release:

In other words, beta-actin protein "wires" nerves together by strengthening the (synaptic) connections between them.

The video shows copies of the plans for creating beta-actin (i.e. mRNA) as it travels from the nucleus to the dendrite fingers. When this happens, the synaptic connections with other neurons are strengthened, nerves are wired together, nerve pathways get stronger, and one of the "wolfs" grows.

Let's hope it was the good wolf.

 

By the way, if anyone is interested in learning more, the press release from Yeshiva University is excellent, if advanced:
http://www.einstein.yu.edu/news/releases/968/watching-molecules-morph-into-memories/

I have a background in this and would be happy to explain any parts that are confusing. A highly simplified glossary:

• (This stuff is fiendishly complex, so I want to mention at the start that I am oversimplifying some things. If I don't do that, I figure that no one in their right mind will read.)
  
• mRNA - This is like the cell's xerox machine. It copies the genetic code from the DNA and brings it to the portion of the cell where the work is done. There, the mRNA is used as a plan to assemble a protein. In this case, the protein in question is beta-actin
• beta-actin - think of this protein as being like putty that the cell can use to strengthen portions of itself. There are a huge number of proteins in cells and I don't know much about most of them, but the press release says, "Beta-actin protein appears to strengthen these synaptic connections by altering the shape of dendritic spines. Memories are thought to be encoded when stable, long-lasting synaptic connections form between neurons in contact with each other."
• synapse - our brain is divided into about 80 billion neurons that are highly interconnected with each other. The interconnections between neurons are called synapses and each of our brains has about 150 trillion of them. It is the synapses that make us who we are. The good wolves and the bad wolves live in there. And with 150 trillion of them, now you know why everyone is different.
• dendritic spine - when neurons talk to each other via their synapses, signals generally pass from their receptors, called dendritic spines or dendrites, to their axons. At the end of the axon there is a synapse where that neuron connects with another neuron's dendritic spine. And the process goes on and on as the mini brain wave passes from dendrite to axon to synapse to dendrite to axon to synapse. There are some exceptions to this, but this is the basic picture.
• What on earth are we seeing? - We're seeing mRNA traveling through the dendritic spine of an individual neuron in a mouse as the mouse is learning something. The mRNA is stimulating the creation of beta-actin that will strengthen the connection at a synapse between this neuron and another neuron. When the synapse gets stronger, a connection is made, the brain has changed, and one of the "wolves" is stronger than it was. These particular neurons are in the hippocampus of the mouse's brain, one of the most important parts of the brain for learning. We can see these tiny tiny mRNA molecules in the video because they have been made to fluoresce - give off light when another type of light is shined on them.

I hope you find the press release interesting. Please let me know if you have any questions! As you can tell, I'm a bit of a neuroscience geek.

 

An interesting thread, indeed!

Another great source to read on this is the following tutorial from another nonprofit:
https://www.dana.org/News/Details.aspx?id=43512

I like the second half because basically what the video shows is the process of synaptic plasticity, and the tutorial explains it well. You may know most of it already, but it is so very complex that I know I had to read it many times to really remember it. Here's the second half of the tutorial: (of course go back and read the first half if this doesn't make sense)

What is synaptic plasticity?

Synaptic plasticity refers to changes in strength of a given synapse. Though it was once believed that synapses were fixed—they were simple way stations transferring information from cell to cell—it is now known that the strength of a synapse, or ability to influence the behavior of receiving cells, can be altered through its own activity or as part of a larger network of neurons. The more a synapse is used, the stronger it become and the more influence it wields over post-synaptic neurons.

What is long-term potentiation?

One type of synaptic plasticity of great interest to neuroscientists is called long term potential (LTP). Repetitive chemical communication between two cells over time strengthens the synapse, resulting in an amplified response in the post-synaptic cell. Simply stated, LTP enhances cell communication by allowing the pre-synaptic and post-synaptic cells to communicate faster and more efficiently. This synaptic strengthening is long-lasting and thought to underlie learning and memory in an area of the brain called the hippocampus. Researchers are working to better understand the cellular mechanisms of LTP and how it results in learning and memory at the behavioral level.

How is synaptic plasticity involved in addiction?

Today, synaptic plasticity is an active line of research in addiction. Researchers hypothesize that drugs of abuse may make actual physical changes to the synapses, similar to what you’d see in natural plasticity like long-term potentiation. As such, repetitive use of these drugs may result in the artificial strengthening of synapses in brain areas fueled by the neurotransmitter dopamine like the nucleus accumbens; reorganization of neural circuits; and, ultimately, addictive behavior.

What can we expect in the future from the study of synapses?

Synapses, particularly their plasticity, remain an important avenue of study in the neuroscience community. Many researchers are actively trying to connect the molecular activity observed at the synapse with cognitive and behavioral outcomes involved with learning, memory, and addiction. In addition, the study of the shape, size and density of synapses are also offering new insights into the aging brain, as well as its response to stress.​

Simplified somewhat, the video shows long-term potentiation (LTP) of a synapse between two sells. The beta-actin is the putty that strengthens the synapse, and the mRNA helps build the beta-actin.

The tutorial says, "This synaptic strengthening is long-lasting and thought to underlie learning and memory in an area of the brain called the hippocampus. Researchers are working to better understand the cellular mechanisms of LTP and how it results in learning and memory at the behavioral level." That pretty much is what Kizaa's study is doing.

Later, when the tutorial talks about addiction, that is where it gets into the "two wolves". When you smoke a cigarette, that teaches your brain that the way to feel better is to smoke a cigarette. Likewise, Alan Gordon talks about worry as an addiction. If you worry a lot, that teaches your brain how to worry because the synapses related to worry experience long term potentiation. As a result, the wolf of worry grows stronger and begins to consume your life. In contrast, if you follow Claire Weekes' advice and float through the worry, those synapses aren't strengthened and you get stronger.

It's fascinating that you bring that up because there is some very recent research that shows that it might be possible to unlock our synapses.

As background, for a long time, people thought that once learning had happened in the emotional parts of our brain, it was locked. Basically, once it had been "consolidated" into the synapses of our brain (think synaptic plasticity, LTP, and the video above), that it could never be forgotten. This was terrible news for trauma victims.

It also meant that if we got negative emotional messages about ourselves in our childhood that they would be stuck with us forever, because those synapses were locked. For example, if we thought that we were worthless (as many of us did), that was locked into our brain. If we thought that a catastrophe is around the corner, that was locked in as well. One of the reasons why many people think of the unconscious as being timeless is that so many of those old emotional learnings are locked up in there and never change.

Applying this to the video above, this would mean that after the beta-actin has been applied to the synapses in our emotional memories, they are stuck and we will always feel bad. (I'm applying significant poetic license here. For example, we don't know if beta-actin is one of the chemicals which makes it hard to get rid of old emotional memories. Let's just go with it, though, because the point I'm trying to make is fiendishly complex and we need to simplify somehow.) Speaking even more loosely, the neural networks related to "self concept" will always been tightly connected to the neural networks related to "worthlessness," and the synapses are locked. Thus, there will always be a "part" of us that feels worthless (@njoy, that was for you - neuroscience is my favorite way to understand parts therapy).

Insofar as emotional learning are locked, then the best that we can do is what you describe: create new, more positive memories, learnings, and associations, to balance out the bad ones. This would mean that we could never completely heal though, because the painful emotional learnings will always be there, haunting us. While it can be great to learn how to compensate for those old injuries, what we really want to do is erase them.

For about a century, the idea of erasing these emotional learnings was thought to be impossible once those memories had been locked away in a process called memory consolidation. However, a rapidly growing body of very recent research has shown that there is a second process, called memory reconsolidation, that allows us to actually erase the original negative emotional learning. It is almost as if we could go into the synapses and rip out the beta actin (again, lots of poetic license here). Rather than compensating for the old wounds, we can, to some degree, erase them.

Basically, in the context of this thread, the memory reconsolidation process is a simple three step process that allows you to unlock the synapses that store your emotional trauma.

It is as if you can finally let go of your emotional trauma, but where the letting go happens is actually in your synapses. Maybe it is even through disolving the putty of the beta-actin molecules that allows you to let go of that emotional trauma and finally heal.

This is clearly a very exciting prospect, which is why a growing number of people in the TMS community are very excited about memory reconsolidation. Within the TMS community, the pioneer who is popularizing this concept is @Dr James Alexander, author of The Hidden Psychology of Pain.

Dr. Alexander shared his thoughts on it in the following thread:
http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/how-do-you-work-with-it.1735/
It really is a terrific thread that is worth reading by anyone interested in emotional healing in TMS.

Thanks a lot for posting this thread. It's amazing where it has taken us. Sometimes having a video like that can really get the creative juices flowing.