1-20-12_Pentagon to Play Mind Games w. Patents_removes Fear

7/31/2019 1-20-12_Pentagon to Play Mind Games w. Patents_removes Fear

1/4

The Pentagon has received an $11 million grant to studyD-cycloserine (DCS) combined with Virtual Reality exposure therapyto not only erase 'fearful memories' from the minds of soldiers,but to alter them.

Wow.

It's like the CIA's MK-Ultra mind control program has gone mainstream and is now right out in the open...

http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/health-and-medical/pentagon-to-play-mind-games-with-soldiers.html

No Fear: Memory Adjustment Pills GetPentagon Push

47inShare

By Katie Drummond

Email Author

December 16, 2011 |

MILITARY IS INSANE THAT THEY CAN TAKE FEAR OUT OF WAR

1 OF 4
http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/health-and-medical/pentagon-to-play-mind-games-with-soldiers.htmlhttp://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/health-and-medical/pentagon-to-play-mind-games-with-soldiers.htmlhttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/author/drummk/mailto:[email protected]://www.wired.com/dangerroom/author/drummk/mailto:[email protected]://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/health-and-medical/pentagon-to-play-mind-games-with-soldiers.htmlhttp://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/health-and-medical/pentagon-to-play-mind-games-with-soldiers.html


2/4

The Pentagon hasnt come close to solving the PTSD crisis plaguing the current generation oftroops. But a cutting-edge realm of treatment might change that by wiping away the fearthat military personnel associate with traumatic memories.

The Pentagon this weekannounced an $11 million grant for three research institutions, all ofthem long-time hubs for the militarys ongoing PTSD investigations. Experts at EmoryUniversity, the University of Southern California and New York-Presbyterian/Weill CornellMedical Center will study the effectiveness of D-Cycloserine (DCS). DCS is a pharmaceuticalthought to help extinguish fearful memories. Its usually taken right before exposure therapy,a process that involves recalling traumatic experiences in an effort to nullify the menacing

associations that accompany them.We already know that exposure therapy is an effective [therapy] for PTSD, and we want tofigure out how to optimize it, Dr. Barbara Rothbaum, who will lead the Emory teamsresearch, told Danger Room. I really think that this study will move beyond the theoretical.We can rescue people.

Exposure therapy is thought to work by allowing patients to revisit traumas in safe settings.

2 OF 4
http://shared.web.emory.edu/whsc/news/releases/2011/department-of-defense-grant-boosts-ptsd-research.htmlhttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/fear-erasing-drugs/ptsd/http://shared.web.emory.edu/whsc/news/releases/2011/department-of-defense-grant-boosts-ptsd-research.html


3/4

Every time the mind remembers an event, it rewrites that recollection. By helping a patientrewrite traumatic memories to be less frightening, studies suggest that exposure therapy cansignificantly improve symptoms like nightmares and flashbacks.

Adding DCS seems to hasten that process, targeting the precise brain pathways responsiblefor regulating fear responses.

Researchers will look at two different kinds of exposure therapy: Virtual reality, where apatient is fully immersed in digital combat scenarios, and prolonged imaginal exposuretherapy, which asks them to simply remember and recount fearful memories. A total of 300patients, all of them veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, will partake. Theyll undergo sevenindividual weekly sessions of one of the therapies. Before each session, half will receive DCS,and the rest will get a placebo.

Experts have already spent plenty of time figuring out how DCS works. Its been around sincethe 1960s, when it was used to treat tuberculosis. Now, however, researchers are moreexcited about the drugs potential ability to alleviate symptoms of depression, schizophrenia,obsessive-compulsive disorder and, of course, PTSD withouta lifetime of pill-popping.

Most drugs, you dose every day, Rothbaum says. But DCS is only useful during exposuretherapy, so youre taking the drug right before the session. And when your series of sessionsend, the medication ends too.

DCS seems to enhance the brains learning process. For PTSD treatment, the drug could,ostensibly, help patients more quickly internalize that, say, driving down a suburban Americanhighway is far different and less dangerous than driving on a Baghdad street. The drugalso binds to receptors in the amygdala, the region of the brain that governs fear response.So by blocking out fearful reactions whilea patient revisits trauma, experts think DCS can,literally, extinguish fear right at the source.

Emory researchers have already tried using DCS and virtual reality in humans with PTSD, fear

of heights and obsessive compulsive disorder. Since 2006, Rothbaum and a team of expertshave been comparing exposure therapy, used along with DCS, Xanax or placebo, in patients.

Results so far are positive, Rothbaum says, though they havent finished analyzing the data.

That said, results from some other human studies on DCS arent encouraging. Just last year,several disappointing trials using DCS were presented by researchers assembled at theInternational Society for Traumatic Stress Studies conference. The early results are not aspositive as we [had] hoped, noted Dr. Charles Marmar, head of the psychiatry department atNYU, of his teams study that combined DCS with cognitive behavioral therapy.

But even a glimmer of hope seems to be enough for the Pentagon. So far, what theyve tried

to treat PTSD which afflicts at least 250,000 of this generations soldiers isnt working.Conventional approaches, like antidepressants and behavioral therapy, have been a massivefailure. So it makes sense that military officials are increasingly open to out-there ideas:Theyre already funding research into yoga and acupuncture, neck injections and digitaldream computer programs although promising approaches taking advantage of illicitsubstances, like marijuana and ecstasy, have thus far been nixed.

Of course, this latest study will be bigger and more thorough than its failed predecessors. It

3 OF 4
http://www.internalmedicinenews.com/news/mental-health/single-article/results-of-d-cycloserine-therapy-for-ptsd-prove-underwhelming/88323923fe.htmlhttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/military-cant-keep-tabs-on-pill-popping-troops-senate-says/http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/military-cant-keep-tabs-on-pill-popping-troops-senate-says/http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/03/army-bioenergy/http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/navy-ptsd-neck-injections/http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/real-life-inception/http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/real-life-inception/http://www.internalmedicinenews.com/news/mental-health/single-article/results-of-d-cycloserine-therapy-for-ptsd-prove-underwhelming/88323923fe.htmlhttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/military-cant-keep-tabs-on-pill-popping-troops-senate-says/http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/military-cant-keep-tabs-on-pill-popping-troops-senate-says/http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/03/army-bioenergy/http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/navy-ptsd-neck-injections/http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/real-life-inception/http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/real-life-inception/


4/4

also builds on years of animal research suggesting that DCS has potential. And theres nodoubt the project is calling on some of the Pentagons top civilian scientists. Dr. Rothbaumhas been evaluating PTSD treatments, including preliminary studies on DCS, for decades. AndDr. Albert Skip Rizzo, from the University of Southern California, pioneered the use of virtualreality therapy to mitigate PTSD symptoms.

Not to mention that this research team will also be conducting genetic tests on every patient.

In particular, theyll be looking at a gene dubbed BDNF. Experts already know that a variantof the BDNF gene can make fear extinction tougher. By comparing patient results to genes,Rothbaum says they hope to figure out whats the best treatment approach, and whetherDCS can really rescue those patients, where maybe therapy alone cant.

Of course, the idea of using drugs to tweak memories isnt without controversy: An onlinedebate flared last year among two camps of neurologists and neuroethicists, arguing overwhether the existence of such drugs would alter something that makes us all human, oropen a Pandoras Box of illicit use by people doing things theyd like to forget themselves, orthat they would like others to forget.

Then again, those debates hinge on DCS, or some other memory extinguisher, actuallyworking. DCSs efficacy is far from proven. And earlier research efforts that tested supposedfear-extinguishing drugs, most notably a series of much-touted, Pentagon-funded studieson Propanolol at Harvard, have all been disappointments.

Photo: U.S. Army

Previously You Might Like

Related Links by Contextly

Navy Gives Neck Injections A Shot At Curing PTSD

Vets Get Ecstasy to Treat Their PTSD Real-Life Inception: Army Looks to Counteract Nightmares With Digital Dreams

Pentagon Investigates Pill-Popping PTSD Prevention Military Investigates Amnesia Beams

Katie Drummond is a New York-based reporter at Danger Room,covering the wild world of military research, and a contributing editor at The Daily.

4 OF 4
http://shared.web.emory.edu/whsc/news/releases/2010/07/treatments-for-ptsd-and-traumatic-brain-injury-for-veterans.htmlhttp://ict.usc.edu/people/400http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-08/persistence-memory-drug-controversies-should-not-hinder-drug-development-neuroethicist-sayshttp://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-08/persistence-memory-drug-controversies-should-not-hinder-drug-development-neuroethicist-sayshttp://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/22/60minutes/main2205629.shtmlhttp://contextly.com/http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/navy-ptsd-neck-injections/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previoushttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/09/new-trial-gives-vets-ecstasy-to-treat-their-ptsd/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previoushttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/real-life-inception/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previoushttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/real-life-inception/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previoushttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/real-life-inception/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previoushttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/06/pentagon-investigates-pill-popping-ptsd-prevention/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previoushttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/10/air-forces-amne/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previoushttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/author/drummkhttp://shared.web.emory.edu/whsc/news/releases/2010/07/treatments-for-ptsd-and-traumatic-brain-injury-for-veterans.htmlhttp://ict.usc.edu/people/400http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-08/persistence-memory-drug-controversies-should-not-hinder-drug-development-neuroethicist-sayshttp://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-08/persistence-memory-drug-controversies-should-not-hinder-drug-development-neuroethicist-sayshttp://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/22/60minutes/main2205629.shtmlhttp://contextly.com/http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/navy-ptsd-neck-injections/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previoushttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/09/new-trial-gives-vets-ecstasy-to-treat-their-ptsd/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previoushttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/real-life-inception/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previoushttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/06/pentagon-investigates-pill-popping-ptsd-prevention/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previoushttp://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/10/air-forces-amne/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previous

Documents

1-20-12_Pentagon to Play Mind Games w. Patents_removes Fear