An amazing new study posted online through Nature Neuroscience has shown that there is a chance people can fight their phobias and fears in their sleep.
Katherina Hauner performed the study during her postdoctoral years in neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Hauner remarked that “it’s a novel finding,” according to Medical Express News. She claims there is a “bigger picture” in which “the treatment of phobias can be enhanced during sleep.”
USA Today covered the release of Nature Neuroscience and offered a nice summary of the detailed experiment: it’s exposure therapy that is best used when people are asleep so that they are not aware of the process; the fear was essentially reduced by exposing the patient to the memory repeatedly.
Mark Mahowalk, professor of neurology at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine, claims that this could mean the “extinction of memory during sleep” which “could be important for people with PTSD and chemical dependencies” via Today.
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