Pop A Pill to Lighten Up The Darkest Moment of Your Life

Patients with post-traumatic stress (PTSD) disorder are very emotional when remembering a traumatic experience. Dr. Alan Brunet has been prescribing his patients propanolol, usually used as a hypertension drug, to lower the emotional stress when recalling the event.

Traumatic memories are first stored in the hippocampus and end by being stored in the long term memory. When a patient recalls the event it is restored in the hippocampus, where the release of hormone stress is triggered. As a result, the patient experiences the same traumatic emotions again. This pill blocks the stress hormone and enables the patient to cope with the memory. Dr. Brunet hopes that the pill will also enable the patient to modify their memory, so that it will not cause any panic when the patient recalls the memory.

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