Engram valence plasticity and trauma therapy

The article analyzes the neurobiological mechanisms of the separability of memory content from its emotional charge (valence). Based on research by the Tonegawa Lab team and Steve Ramirez, the text explains that contextual representations in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus exhibit greater plasticity than stable affective records in the basolateral amygdala (BLA). Through optogenetic reactivation of engrams, it was shown that it is possible to re-link a specific event with an opposite emotional value. This discovery is crucial for understanding fear extinction processes and potential therapeutic methods in treating PTSD, suggesting that changing the emotional meaning of the past is biologically possible through the reorganization of functional neural connectivity.