The Spice Ingredient That Can Block Bad Memories
A study in rats points to the anti-inflammatory power of curcumin
Curcumin, a compound found in turmeric that may have protective effects against neurodegenerative diseases, might one day help those with PTSD let go of bad memories, suggests a new rat study published in the journalNeuropsychopharmacology.
Researchers at Hunter College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York wondered if the compound could help post-traumatic stress disorder. To test the idea, the researchers fed rats either regular chow or pellets enriched with curcumin. They then conditioned the rats to fear a certain sound by playing a tone, then shocking their foot. After the conditioning, the researchers removed the rat brains and analyzed them. In other sets of experiments, they tried to get the rats to recall the fear memory by performing memory retrieval tests on them.
They found that rats who ate curcumin-spiked food had a much harder time retrieving the fear memory, suggesting that the compound played a role in keeping bad memories at bay.
“The curcumin effectively prevented the reconsolidation of the fear memory, and the effect was very long-lasting,” says Glenn Schafe, PhD, study coauthor and professor in the department of psychology at Hunter College. “It looked to us like very convincing data that the fear memories lost were lost in an enduring manner.”
You can’t draw human conclusions from rat studies, of course, but the results were so promising that the researchers plan to devise a way to test human subjects next.
They don’t yet know the mechanism behind curcumin’s memory magic trick, but Schafe suspects its anti-inflammatory property plays a role. Curcumin can affect cellular processes in the brain, and it’s especially good at targeting inflammation: a response implicated in a wide range of diseases from cardiovascular diseases to Alzheimer’s and even PTSD, he says. “The brain has its own kind of immune system,” he says. “The idea that curcumin, which is a natural anti-inflammatory compound, when introduced in the diet can affect these processes—which have also been implicated in memory formation—is pretty well grounded.”
Memory reconsolidation is a hot area of psycholofgy and psychiatry right now, Schafe says: A therapist will sometimes ask a person with a traumatic memory to recall it, a process that weakens and destabilizes the memory before it’s put back more permanently. Targeting that window with a dietary intervention like curcumin could be useful. “The idea is that the curcumin [interferes with] cellular processes in the brain that are critical for putting a memory into long-term storage,” he says.
Schafe’s rat study used 1 gram of curcumin per kilogram of body weight, which would translate into about 68 grams of curcumin per day for a human—out of reach for even the most avid curry lover. They used such a high dose because the compound is very poorly absorbed by the body, Schafe says, which is one of the major drawbacks right now for this promising natural remedy. And while cooking with turmeric is a good idea, the spice contains only about 3% curcumin. “The question is, how do we get this compound that does so many great things medicinally to get into the human in a concentration large enough to actually make a difference?” he says. “That is the future of this area.”
He hopes that one day, scientists will make a modification of the curcumin molecule to make it far more absorbable with effects at much lower doses. “The fact that we can feed rats curcumin at these very, very high doses that would be untenable in humans and show these effects certainly suggests that it’s worth pursuing,” he says.
Spice already linked to a variety of health benefits.
Turmeric — which is used in curries — can block fear memories after a traumatic experience, recent research finds.
Turmeric has already been linked to a variety of medicinal properties, including helping to treat stomach problems, arthritis and diabetes.
The study on rats has shown that the yellow-coloured, ginger root could have psychological benefits as well.
Professor Glenne Schafe, who led the research, said:
“We showed that rats freely fed a diet enriched with curcumin [found in turmeric] have impaired encoding of fear memories.
We also showed that rats with a pre-existing fear memory can lose that memory when it is recalled while they are eating a curcumin-enriched diet.”
Rats in the study who were fed the curcumin had their bad memories repressed for a long time.
Curcumin seemed to prevent the fearful memories being reconsolidated.
In other words: it was very hard for the fearful memories to return.
The authors write:
“Curcumin, a yellow-pigment compound found in the popular Indian spice turmeric (Curcuma longa), has been extensively investigated for its anti-inflammatory, chemopreventative and antidepressant properties.
Here, we examined the efficacy of dietary curcumin at impairing the consolidation and reconsolidation of a Pavlovian fear memory, a widely studied animal model of traumatic memory formation in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).”
Rats in the study, though, were given about 1 gram of curcumin per kilogram of their body weight.
This would mean giving 68 grams to an average human — an amount that is way to high.
Unfortunately the compound is very poorly absorbed by the body and turmeric only contains about 3% curcumin.
Future research will look at ways of increasing the concentration and absorption of the compound.
The study’s authors conclude:
“…our findings indicate that a diet enriched with curcumin is capable of impairing fear memory consolidation and reconsolidation processes, findings that may have important clinical implications for the treatment of disorders such as PTSD that are characterized by unusually strong and persistently reactivated fear memories.,"
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