Reprise des conférences du GDR le 30 Septembre à 13h

The expression and persistence of vivid and distressing intrusive memories, is a central feature of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It remains largely unknown why these traumatic memories persist in some individuals, and fade away in others. Current understanding of PTSD links this persistence to the disruption of memory functions involved in the formation and updating of the memory trace, a deficit rooted in the alteration of hippocampal structural integrity. During this talk, I will present an alternative hypothesis, rooted in the idea that the variation across individuals in the response to trauma may additionally depend on the disruption of the brain system that normally allows the control over memory, a central mechanism of active forgetting (Mary et al., Science, 2020).

This presentation will be articulated around the findings of a longitudinal neuroimaging study realized in a cohort of 120 individuals exposed to the 11/13 Paris terrorist attacks. This research program is centred on the Think/No-Think task developed to study memory suppression and how the functional plasticity of active forgetting mechanisms in associated control circuits may affect the response to a severe psychological trauma.