w00t w00t booyah

But here it is, wrapped in another nice package.

Cognitive work, targeted to change brain chemistry - look Ma, no drugs!

This time, it's reported as a treatment for PTSD -

The new procedure relies on a quirky property of memories called reconsolidation. The process of jogging a memory – with an emotional or sensory jolt, for instance – seems to make it malleable for a few hours.

...

In search of a gentler way to block fearful memories, Marie Monfils, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas in Austin, tweaked a therapy sometimes used to treat PTSD, called extinction.

Here, doctors repeatedly deliver threatening cues – gun shots, for instance – in safe environments in hopes of drowning out the fearful associations.

Think of riding a glass elevator a bazillion times to get over a fear of heights, with your best friends, completely safe (maybe even with your favorite tunes). In this case, you associate something else (something as simple as a blue square) with the thing that scares you witless, and the bad association fades as the memory reconsolidates. It's a small window, too - and varies from person to person. Do it outside of that window, and blammo - what your first impression was when you heard this? Yeah - congrats, you just associated that bad stuff with your good stuff and TRIGGER is now your middle name.

Also, this is a rat study - with some very, VERY limited human study tossed in afterward.

But - pretty nifty, neh?

But here it is, wrapped in another nice package.

Cognitive work, targeted to change brain chemistry - look Ma, no drugs!

This time, it's reported as a treatment for PTSD -

The new procedure relies on a quirky property of memories called reconsolidation. The process of jogging a memory – with an emotional or sensory jolt, for instance – seems to make it malleable for a few hours.

...

In search of a gentler way to block fearful memories, Marie Monfils, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas in Austin, tweaked a therapy sometimes used to treat PTSD, called extinction.

Here, doctors repeatedly deliver threatening cues – gun shots, for instance – in safe environments in hopes of drowning out the fearful associations.

Think of riding a glass elevator a bazillion times to get over a fear of heights, with your best friends, completely safe (maybe even with your favorite tunes). In this case, you associate something else (something as simple as a blue square) with the thing that scares you witless, and the bad association fades as the memory reconsolidates. It's a small window, too - and varies from person to person. Do it outside of that window, and blammo - what your first impression was when you heard this? Yeah - congrats, you just associated that bad stuff with your good stuff and TRIGGER is now your middle name.

Also, this is a rat study - with some very, VERY limited human study tossed in afterward.

But - pretty nifty, neh?

I don't know, but I'm sure other people have some verbal traditions within their families when it comes to dealing with certain subjects. These two parables have been told quite freely from time to time. Have you ever heard them?

A sparrow, lost and separated from its flock during the fall migration, gets stranded alone during an early snowstorm where he can't see or hear where he is, thrown to the ground he was - buried in the snow. Soon, he's going to freeze to death, he's so cold!

What he doesn't know, is that he's in a pasture full of dairy cows. Trying to free himself from the clot of snow he's fallen into, a cow walks over him - and as luck would have it, dumps a load on top of him.

It's smelly, awful - and warm! Able to free himself from the manure, he sings out of pure joy of being able to see where he is and warm enough to know he's going to be okay!

Hearing the bird singing, a local fox steals quickly into the pasture, frees him from his stinky situation...and gobbles him up.

MORAL: Someone who takes a dump on you isn't always doing it out of malice; and someone who notices you making a racket because you're in shit and gets you out of it, isn't always doing you a favor.

The other?

There once was a boy with a terrible temper. After being lectured by his father over fights picked with his brothers, sisters, friends and schoolmates, he is taken to the backyard with its white picket fence. His father has brought a bag of nails and a hammer.

"For every time you've lost your temper with another person, hammer a nail into this fence." Doing as he was told, there was shortly a neat row of three-penny nails hammered into the fence.

"Now son. For each time you've apologized for losing your temper, remove the nail." Again, for he was at heart a good child, he removed each nail.

"See what you've left behind?" said the father, pointing towards the fence. For there was indeed a very nice, neat row of holes where the nails had been. "That is the harm you've done with your temper that can't be undone. What you've done to your reputation, their feelings, their trust...things that can't be unmade again. Remember this the next time you want to take out your frustrations on someone with your temper. And find another way, instead."

( Now, I've told you those stories so I can tell you this one... )