by Xiaomeng Han
figures by Abigail Burrus
What comes to mind when you hear the term electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)? A cruel torture method for disobedient psychiatric patients portrayed in films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? Or a last-resort for treatment-resistant depression with less discomfort and fewer side-effects? New developments in using ECT to treat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder might soon give us a new way to think about ECT: a tool to erase one’s painful memories, like the memory modification method in the film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Dealing with Painful Memories:The focus of PTSD treatment
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) affects individuals who have gone through extremely frightening, painful, or stressful events in their life. A variety of situations can trigger PTSD symptoms: a war veteran can have flashbacks of fierce combat scenes, a terror attack victim can re-experience the horror of an explosion triggered by the sounds of firecrackers, and a victim of childhood abuse can have vivid nightmares well into adulthood. People who suffer from PTSD are haunted by their painful memories in a way that disturbs their daily functioning. The central focus of PTSD treatment has always been dealing with patients’ painful memories. Given its utility in many areas of psychiatry, ECT has been studied for its potential effects in modifying painful memories.
ECT is a medical procedure in which a brief, monitored seizure is generated in the patient’s brain by passing small electrical current through the brain while the patient is under general anesthesia. This treatment restores the chemical balance of the brain and is effective at alleviating the symptoms of a variety of mental illnesses, including severe depression, mania, and psychosis. Due to the fact that this treatment was given to patients without general anesthesia in its early days, ECT treatment has been stigmatized, particularly in the past several decades. However, nowadays, ECT actually is a safe, quick and effective procedure with few side effects and is used to achieve faster recovery in some patients with depression.
An Almost Forgotten ECT Study in Rats
When people first administered ECT to patients in the 1930s to 1950s, they found that it caused memory impairments. In retrospect, that might have been an early sign of the possible utility of ECT for treating PTSD.
Another early indicator of ECT as a potential treatment for PTSD came from a study of rats in the 1960s. A group of researchers at Rutgers University led by Dr. Donald J Lewis showed that ECT might be able to specifically erase fear memories. The researchers first made rats associate a tone with a fearful memory by playing this tone as they electrically shocked the rats’ feet. Then, when the researchers played the tone again, the rats froze in fear and licked their water bottle less due to their memory of being shocked upon hearing the tone.
Dr. Lewis and his team then tried using ECT to erase the rats’ memories of being shocked. To do this, they first reactivated the fearful memories in rats by playing the tone that the rats found frightening and then gave the rats ECT immediately afterwards. Surprisingly, they found that rats that were given ECT treatment licked their water bottle more when they heard the tone compared to control rats that were not given the treatment. This suggests that ECT impaired the fearful memory of being shocked.
Interestingly, the researchers found that in order for the ECT treatment to successfully impair the fearful memory, it had to be administered immediately after the researchers reactivated the memory by playing the tone that the rats found frightening. If Dr. Lewis’s team did not play the tone immediately before the ECT, the treatment had no effect on the rats. This suggests that ECT works by interfering with a memory as the rat is actively remembering it.
Rediscovering the Effect of ECT on Bad Memories
In 2014, nearly 50 years after the initial rat study, another group of researchers from Europe tested if ECT could help erase traumatic memories in patients with depression who were already undergoing ECT treatment. In their study, patients heard two traumatic stories involving violence or emotional pain through slide shows and narrative storytelling. One week later, only one story was “reactivated,” meaning the patients heard the traumatic story again. Immediately after the story was reactivated, patients received ECT treatment. The researchers then tested the patients’ memories of these two stories through multiple choices tests. As with the rats, the patients’ memories of the story that was “reactivated” immediately before ECT treatment were impaired. Impressively, they remembered the other story well, suggesting that ECT can be used to erase specific traumatic memories.
Possible Treatment Regimen for Erasing Painful Memories
Another 2014 study by group of psychiatrists from Germany showed that an ECT treatment regimen could be effective in ameliorating a PTSD patient’s symptoms. In this study, a single patient suffering from PTSD from a serious car accident and several episodes of sexual abuse underwent eight sessions of ECT. Before each ECT treatment, he was asked to describe one of his traumatic memories (the car accident), which is equivalent to “reactivating” that specific memory like playing the tone for those rats or re-hearing one of the traumatic stories by those depression patients. Right after his description, he was anesthetized and administered an ECT treatment. As the treatment progressed, the patient began to have fewer flashbacks and reduced anxiety and depression, indicating that his PTSD was improving. Incredibly, by the end of the treatment course, the patient could barely remember the car accident.
Moving into Clinical Trials? Explore Underlying Mechanisms? Or Be Cautious of Ethical Problems?
Based on these past studies, the use of ECT treatment to free PTSD patients from their devastating and painful memories seems promising. With inventions such as ultrabrief pulse width (a new method with minimal discomfort and side-effects), nowadays, ECT treatment is no longer as frightening as it used to be. Considering that knowledge and acceptance of ECT are growing in the general population, we can imagine that in the near future, there will be an increasing number of clinical trials with attempts to use ECT to treat people with PTSD. ECT is still not perfect. Scientists are still trying to improve and perfect memory reactivation techniques, treatment frequency, and length. However, as it stands, ECT is an incredibly promising choice for psychological treatment.
Moreover, these ECT studies may help neuroscientists understand how memories are formed in the brain. Based on several significant research papers also published around 2014, scientists now know that memories can be stored in certain neural cells or their connections. However, what happens to these cells and their connections during memory reactivation and ECT is still mysterious. One can only imagine how our memories are created, retrieved, and recreated in our mysterious brain.
Xiaomeng Han is a second year graduate student in the Harvard PhD Program in Neuroscience. She uses electron microscopy to study neuronal connectivity.
For more information:
- To grasp the basics of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), check out this Scientific American article.
- For a more in-depth history of ECT, read this Scientific American article.
- The 1960s research on rats in the Science magazine can be found here. (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/160/3827/554.long)
- This National Institute of Mental Health page explores the definition, causes, symptoms and treatments of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
- For more on using ECT to erase painful memories in humans, check out this TIME article.
Hi, is there a way to proof that your brain has been altered by electricity? What are some common test that can be done to
show that electricity has affected your brain?
far as I know there are no clear indications that prove you underwent or have been altered by ECT just like you can’t scientifically prove EMF RF mhz can be used for mind control especially with items such as social media that can trigger certain things it is uncharted territory and I would assume at that point would fall under classified information by the government due to being able to track events such as Havana Syndrome at that point.
Could you please email me
I am 62 years old. And been married for 43 years
Problem is that back in 82 she up and left. We were living with my father and she wanted it out of thrrr. Her and my dad were fighting
I was trying to find a job but with no car it was kind of hard. Anyway she told me she was taking the kids 2 boys 2-3 moving to Titusville fl, we were in Pa
2weeks after she moved down here, nothing about divorce or I kept asking yo come down
She started dating a guy that was 35 years older than here. Sleeping with him and she even told me about him how she met this guy and was I love blah blah blah
She told our son when I cam and picked them up to go back to Pa not to say anything
A month later she was with a 50 year old guy and her mom loved him. Mother had money problems and she had just fixed her daughter up with a that had a sail boat and a plane. Perfect for helping her mom get a candy business started. I called down there on sat and they were out in the boat and her mother said he had invited the family for the next weekend to go sailing
That lasted 45 days but I heard about him all the time
She had been with 6 guys in 10 months, I even called her a slut, here dad is even a pastor and she was living under her roof and when I asked him later why he didn’t counsel his daughter he said he didn’t know what was happening but he like the boat ride
But the last guy she was with was a cripple and bed ridden, not sure of what the attraction was
But anyway after a month she called me and said that she wanted him to adopt our boys and wouldn’t give my consent
I blew my top, the gull for even asking that
Then she called me and cussed me out for 2 days on how I ruined her life because, we had her tubes tied in 1980 because her dr said that C section shouldn’t have more than 2 at the max
We were done do we had her tubes tied
Now the guy is beating my wife, in front of my kids because I wouldn’t give up custody and she could have kids
Any way towards the end if 82 she called and ask if we could get back together
Everything has been fine but now this black cloud comes over my brain and I start vomiting at the mouth
Even about the old boy friend that lived in Ohio and caught her having phone sex with him
But I want these memories gone
She tired of hearing about them for the last 5 weeks and I am dragging her through the mood
Could this help
Thanks for your time
TJ
very clear and good article easy to understand. Thank you
ECT saved my father‘s life and my parents‘ marriage. My father had suffered from a deep, intractable depression that wasn‘t responding to medication. His lack of insight meant that he had been making no progress in therapy. ECT gave him his life back. There were no complications. I’d actually suggested it myself as a treatment for him after researching it.
ECT gave my friend back her life, allowing her to leave hospital, get a job, and return to her family.
I‘m considering ECT myself.
ECT isn‘t a cure for PTSD. The article doesn‘t claim that it is – only that it may have some impact on PTSD. ECT is typically used to alleviate the symptoms of major depressions.
See site ectjustice and Life After ECT. Inflicting repeated brain injuries and systemic injuries both short and long term is not acceptable. Damages being identified. Tied in notes to ECT.
I’m not a doctor or a scientist, so I’m speaking from my personal history only.
Some have had horrible and traumatic experiences with ECT, and I’m so sorry that any of you have had to go through that. However, experiences are a spectrum. Your own negative ECT story doesn’t mean that ECT at its core is negative.
ECT saved my life. I was suicidal and an abuse survivor with PTSD. I had tried various medications and therapies, but nothing was working. I wanted to die, but I didn’t want to want that. I checked myself into a psychiatric hospital. I asked to try ECT.
I do suffer slight memory loss, but I balance it with keeping reminders/notes on my phone, using an online calendar, journaling, and trying to focus on the positives. When people say, “I wish I could watch that movie again, like for the first time,” I am actually able to do that. I occasionally forget the plots of movies or books I’ve read, so I get to re-experience it. I also don’t remember all the details of my abuse, and that alone is worth so much.
ECT is not what it once was, and I know that a lot of my benefits are from having had it in the 2010s, not the 1950s, also unilateral ECT instead of bilateral. Yes, memory loss is occasionally frustrating, but the alternative was me committing suicide, so I took a chance, and I couldn’t be more thankful.
I’m not trying to invalidate anyone else’s negative experience with ECT, but I wanted to voice my story to provide a different perspective. It may not have worked for some of you, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work at all.
Mental illness is worse than death. I suffered years of stigma and discrimination and it really left left me paranoid, anxious and depressed. I was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder and the stigma and discrimination is making it worse. Now, I’ve no happiness and confidence. Drugs are not helping and counselling too is not effective. I’m thinking about opting in for ECT. If ECT can help me forget those painful years, I don’t mind losing my memory. Afterall, I want to start afresh and in a new environment.
I totally agree. ECT helped me. I have been to 35 sessions so far and wish it were quicker.
Everyone’s comments seem to revolve around losing memories, losing your livelihood, or a chance that it may help.
I have been seen by many doctors and specialists. I have yet to try ect because I prefer a more conservative route before choosing something I cannot undo.
That is the beauty of being able to make up our own minds and take our own risks. I simply write this because I, too, have taken all the drugs and the tms . I’ve done ketamine infusions.
I want to emphasize this point, a lot of the terrifying symptoms listed here are actually things I am experiencing every other week or month. I don’t know who I am anymore or what my purpose is. The depression is deep and they say I have a type of amnesia that should be localized but is instead stealing days and weeks and long term memories too.. nothing has made me feel better for longer than a few weeks.
I relate to having a nice job and losing it. I was premed with honors majoring in biochemistry. I wanted to learn the deeper hidden intricacies behind mental illness. Alas, it’s been years since I lost my autonomy and my cognition is rapidly dissipating.
Everyone’s symptoms will be different and it is ultimately your decision to pursue whichever treatment you feel may help you most. If, however, you fear losing memories or your autonomy or your life or schooling, I can tell you from personal experience that these symptoms can arise from other things like tbi, mdd, and much more Im sure.
I wish everyone luck on their person journey of this long winding seemingly never ending road to good mental health and happiness.
I’ve shown you your writing skills and your blog looks great. Is this a paid theme or did you edit it yourself? Ayyyy keep going with good quality. Reading a good book.
Does ECT make you loss the latest year of your life i really need to erase everything about this year if anybody tried that let me know.