'Anti-phobia pill' breaks link between memory and fear

'Anti-phobia pill' breaks link between memory and fear
18:00 15 February 2009 by Linda Geddes

Phobias and post-traumatic stress could be banished for good by taking a commonly prescribed drug for blood pressure.
Previous studies had suggested that people who experienced traumatic events such as rape and car crashes showed fewer signs of stress when recalling the event if they had first been injected with the beta blocker propranolol, but it was unclear whether the effect would be permanent or not. Fearful memories often return, even after people have been treated for them.
To investigate whether propranolol could stop fear returning in the longer term, Merel Kindt and her colleagues at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, conditioned 60 healthy students to associate a picture of a spider with an electric shock, so that they would eventually be startled by the picture even in the absence of a shock.
However, if the conditioned students were given oral propranolol before seeing the picture, their startle response was eliminated. What's more, it didn't return when the students were put through a second round of conditioning that should have reinstated their fear – suggesting that the association may have been permanently broken.
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