Latest Elizabeth Phelps Stories

Recalling emotional memory opens window of opportunity to rewrite itScientists have for the first time selectively blocked a conditioned fear memory in humans with a behavioral manipulation. Participants remained free of the fear memory for at least a year. The research builds on emerging evidence from animal studies that reactivating an emotional memory opens a 6-hour window of opportunity in which a training procedure can alter it."Our results suggest a non-pharmacological,...

WASHINGTON -- The closer New Yorkers were to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, the more vivid their memories are of the disaster that brought down the buildings.For people close to the scene, memory of the event involves an emotion-recording portion of the brain, while those who were farther away involved other parts of the brain in the recollection, researchers report in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.All of the 24 participants in the study were in...

Integration is best way to unite different groups, study suggestsOvercoming fear of members of another race may not be as easy as some might hope, a new study suggests.The research, which included the use of photos of people and mild electric shocks administered to study participants, revealed the same responses for both black and white Americans.The only factor that helped diminish the fear was experience with interracial dating, the study found."This provides support for something...