Can Drug Addiction be Cured by Manipulating the Memory?: A Literature Review of Memory-Based Treatments

Authors

  • Maja Paloma Völker Maastricht University

Keywords:

memory, drug addiction, reconsolidation, retrieval, EMDR

Abstract

Drug addiction constitutes a major health problem in modern society. Most of the current treatments have demonstrated limited effectiveness in long-lasting treatment results because of focusing on acute symptoms of the illness while neglecting important factors that maintain addiction. Memory manipulation therapies appear to be a promising alternative that act on maintaining mechanisms. This review paper first investigates memory-related processes that cause substance dependence. Additionally, several findings regarding the effects of memory manipulation are summarized. The reviewed studies suggest that targeting maladaptive drug memories is a promising therapy approach that seems to prevent relapse. Three types of memory manipulation treatment are reviewed; namely extinction training, reconsolidation therapy and eye movement desensitization reprocessing. Finally, the paper concludes with the implications for the treatment of addiction using the described approaches to adapt drug-related memories.

Author Biography

Maja Paloma Völker, Maastricht University

3rd year Psycholoy Bachelor student, FPN

References

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC.

Blonigen, D. M., Finney, J. W., Wilbourne, P. L., Moos, R. H. (2015). Psychosocial Treatments for Substance Use Disorders. In P. E. Nathan & J. M. Gorman (Authors), A guide to treatments that work (pp. 731-761). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Blum, K., Han, D., Femino, J., Smith, D. E., Saunders, S., Simpatico, T., Schoenthaler, S. J., Oscar-Berman, M., Gold, M. S. (2014). Systematic Evaluation of “Compliance” to Prescribed Treatment Medications and “Abstinence” from Psychoactive Drug Abuse in Chemical Dependence Programs: Data from the Comprehensive Analysis of Reported Drugs. PLoS ONE, 9(9). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0104275

Douaihy, A. B., Kelly, T. M., & Sullivan, C. (2013). Medications for Substance Use Disorders. Social Work in Public Health, 28(0), 264–278. http://doi.org/10.1080/19371918.2013.759031

Dutra, L., Stathopoulou, G., Basden, S. L., Leyro, T.M., Powers, M. B., Otto, M.W. (2008). A meta-analytic review of psychosocial interventions for substance use disorders. Am. J. Psychiatry, 165, 179-187. 10.1176/appi.ajp.2007.06111851

Everitt, B. (2009). S.2.02 Neural mechanisms of reinforcement for drug addiction.

European Neuropsychopharmacology, 19. doi:10.1016/s0924-977x(09)70038-0

Everitt, B. J., & Robbins, T. W. (2016). Drug Addiction: Updating Actions to Habits to Compulsions Ten Years On. Annual Review of Psychology, 67(1), 23-50. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033457

Grant, B. F., Saha, T. D., Ruan, W. J., Goldstein, R. B., Chou, S. P., Jung, J., … Hasin, D. S. (2016). Epidemiology of DSM-5 Drug Use Disorder: Results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions–III. JAMA Psychiatry, 73(1), 39–47. http://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2015.2132

Hase, M., Schallmayer, S., & Sack, M. (2008). EMDR Reprocessing of the Addiction Memory: Pretreatment, Posttreatment, and 1-Month Follow-Up. Journal of EMDR Practice and Research, 2(3), 170-179. doi:10.1891/1933-3196.2.3.170

Jhanjee, S. (2014). Evidence Based Psychosocial Interventions in Substance Use. Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine, 36(2), 112–118. http://doi.org/10.4103/0253-7176.130960

Lee, J. L. C., Milton, A. L., Everitt, B. J. (2006). Cue-Induced Cocaine Seeking and Relapse Are Reduced by Disruption of Drug Memory Reconsolidation. Journal of Neuroscience, 26 (22) 5881-5887; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0323-06.2006

Lonergan, M., Saumier, D., Tremblay, J., Kieffer, B., Brown, T. G., & Brunet, A. (2016). Reactivating addiction-related memories under propranolol to reduce craving: A pilot randomized controlled trial. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 50, 245-249. doi:10.1016/j.jbtep.2015.09.012

Mckim, T. H., & Boettiger, C. A. (2015). Addiction as Maladaptive Learning, with a Focus on Habit Learning. The Wiley Handbook on the Cognitive Neuroscience of Addiction, 1-28. doi:10.1002/9781118472415.ch1

Merlo, E., Milton, A. L., & Everitt, B. J. (2015). Enhancing cognition by affecting memory reconsolidation. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 4, 41-47. doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2015.02.003

Milton, A. L., & Everitt, B. J. (2012). The persistence of maladaptive memory: Addiction, drug memories and anti-relapse treatments. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 36(4), 1119-1139. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2012.01.002

Milton, A. (2013). Drink, drugs and disruption: memory manipulation for the treatment of addiction. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 23(4), 706-712. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2012.11.008

National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2018) Drug Misuse and Addiction. Retrieved October 1, 2018, from https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction/drug-misuse-addiction

National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2018). Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment: A Research-Based Guide: Third Edition. (n.d.). PsycEXTRA Dataset. doi:10.1037/e686332012-001

Robbins, T., Ersche, K., & Everitt, B. (2008). Drug Addiction and the Memory Systems of the Brain. Annals Of The New York Academy Of Sciences, 1141(1), 1-21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1196/annals.1441.020

Soyka, M. (2017). Treatment of Opioid Dependence with Buprenorphine: Current Update. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 19(3): 299-308.

Taylor, J. R., Olausson, P., Quinn, J. J., & Torregrossa, M. M. (2009). Targeting extinction and reconsolidation mechanisms to combat the impact of drug cues on addiction. Neuropharmacology, 56, 186-195. doi:10.1016/j.neuropharm.2008.07.027

Thomas, É, Saumier, D., Pitman, R. K., Tremblay, J., & Brunet, A. (2017). Consolidation and reconsolidation are impaired by oral propranolol administered before but not after memory (re)activation in humans. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 142, 118-125. doi:10.1016/j.nlm.2016.12.010

Torregrossa, M. M., & Taylor, J. R. (2012). Learning to forget: manipulating extinction and reconsolidation processes to treat addiction. Psychopharmacology, 226(4), 659-672. doi:10.1007/s00213-012-2750-9

van den Hout, M., & Engelhard, I. (2012). How does EMDR work? Journal of Experimental Psychopathology, 3(5), 724-738. doi:10.5127/jep.028212

Volkow, N., & Morales, M. (2015). The Brain on Drugs: From Reward to Addiction. Cell, 162(4), 712-725. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2015.07.046

World Health Organization. Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse. (2009). Patient Level Guidelines – for Clinicians. In Guidelines for the Psychosocially Assisted Pharmacological Treatment of Opioid Dependence. Geneva: World Health Organization.

Xue, Y., Luo, Y., Wu, P., Shi, H., Xue, L., Chen, C., Zhu, W., Ding, Z., Bao, Y., Shi, J., Epstein, D., Shaham, Y. and Lu, L. (2012). A Memory Retrieval-Extinction Procedure to Prevent Drug Craving and Relapse. Science, 336(6078), pp.241-245.

Downloads

Published

2019-07-16

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 1 (2019)

Section

Articles

License

Authors can use either their accepted author manuscript for:

  • Use at a conference, meeting or for teaching purposes.
  • Internal training.
  • Sharing individual articles with colleagues for their research use (also known as 'scholarly sharing').
  • Use in a subsequent compilation of the author's, or the supervisor's works.
  • Inclusion in a thesis or dissertation.
  • Reuse of portions or extracts from the article in other works.
  • Preparation of derivative works (other than for commercial purposes).