Dr. Amy Milton is an Associate Professor in Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and the Ferreras-Willetts Fellow in Neuroscience at Downing College Cambridge. Her research focuses on understanding how memories persist and become updated in the brain, with the aim of using this knowledge to develop new forms of treatment for mental health disorders based on maladaptive emotional memories. She's trying to understand the conditions under which emotional memories become unstable, particularly those contributing to post traumatic stress disorder and drug addiction.
We talked in the middle of April 2022. When I heard about Amy's research and watched her TED Talk about editing memories, I thought this was something out of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It's not often that you encounter treatment with such transformative results and such promise, and at the same time, such scary potential. Despite her very technical subject, Amy was easy to talk to and I appreciated the care she took in explaining her research and its implications to a general audience.
EPISODE SUMMARY
In this conversation we talk about:
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And now, let's jump right in with Dr. Amy Milton.
TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS
[4:54] Life in the Present
[6:29] Early Childhood Lessons
[9:06] A Path to Studying Memory
[11:33] Taxonomy of Memory
[17:10] The Difference Between a Habit and a Non-Habit
[20:09] Being Mindful of Habits
[23:46] Living with an Understanding of Memory
[26:55] Maladaptive Memories
[32:55] Extinction Learning and PTSD
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