Unavoidably, at times, this approach may ignore

some aspects of mental disorders. A discourse with clinicians allows neuroscientists to realign their models to ensure that they represent processes thought to cause or maintain these disorders. Benefits to clinicians involve being informed of new research findings that have the potential to be applied in new pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments. We provide two examples of how findings on memory, ie, reconsolidation and forgetting, may provide the impetus for new treatment interventions for Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical several mental disorders. More generally, we believe that an elucidation of the memory processes not only provides clinicians with a list of potential clinical phenomena that could be the target of interventions, but it can also permit an understanding of why some kinds of treatments are more efficacious than others. In addition, our understanding of the memory processes can provide significant contribution to the refinement of extant Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical psychotherapies, including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The aim of this review is to advocate how an understanding of the brain mechanisms involved in memory provides a basis for: (i) re-conceptualizing some of the mental disorders; (ii) refining existing therapeutic Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical tools; and (iii) designing new ones for targeting processes that maintain

these disorders. We start by defining some of the stages which a memory undergoes and discuss why an understanding of memory Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical processing by the brain has clinical relevance. We then briefly review some of the clinical studies that have targeted memory processes. We end by discussing some new insights from the field of neuroscience that have implications for conceptualizing mental disorders. Defining memory phases Forgetting

As Ebbinghaus1 demonstrated in his classic work, new memories can do one of two things; persist Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical or be forgotten (Figure 1). It is generally assumed that PF-01367338 ic50 forgetting is more a vice (ie, dysfunction) than a virtue (ie, constitutive process). However, the idea that forgetting might be beneficial for memory has been frequently expressed.2-6 those In the literary world, Jorge Luis Borges illustrated the essential role of forgetting for the human experience in his short story about Funes.7 As Funes could not forget anything, he could not live a normal life because a sea of unimportant details swamped every moment of awareness. We agree that, without constitutive forgetting, efficient memory would not be possible in the first place. Forgetting of established long-term memory (LTM) may indicate that memory is either physically unavailable (ie, lost), or that it is (temporarily) inaccessible. With some exceptions, theories proposed within the domains of experimental and cognitive psychology often emphasize one type of forgetting over the other.