Brain May Be Able to Suppress Memories

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It makes sense that the prefrontal cortex would take the lead in this type of activity, Sanberg said. "In our prefrontal cortex, we've evolved mechanisms to control older parts of the brain," he explained.

According to Depue, if people could harness the power of the mind to suppress traumatic, unwanted memories, it could pave the way to treatments against a range of psychiatric illnesses.

"The next step is to actually try and do this with clinical populations, looking specifically at whether they show some dysfunction in the neural mechanisms that we've outlined in this article," the researcher said. "Then we'd try and pinpoint just what in the brain is going wrong."

More information

Find out about PTSD at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health.