When emotional memories become traumatic, we can learn to suppress or regulate the emotions they elicit, but is it possible to modify the original memory and prevent the return of fear altogether? Evidence in the last two decades indicates that this might be possible using pharmacological, as well as non-invasive manipulations. Dr. Daniela Schiller has been testing this possibility in humans by examining whether laboratory-induced emotional memories can be modified or permanently blocked using pharmacology, as well as drug-free behavioral manipulations.
Dr. Daniela Schiller earned both a BA in psychology and philosophy and a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from Tel Aviv University. In 2005, she began working as a postdoctoral fellow at New York University, where she conducted a groundbreaking study that focused on memory reconsolidation and the blocking or erasure of fearful memories. Dr. Schiller’s work has been published in numerous scholarly journals, including Nature, Neuron, and Nature Neuroscience. She has also served as a contributing author for books, such as The Human Amygdala. Dr. Schiller has been the recipient of several awards, including the Fulbright postdoctoral award, the New York Academy of Sciences Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists, and the Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship award in the Neurosciences, for her research on how to rewire the brain to eradicate fear as a response to memory. Dr. Schiller is currently an Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience and Friedman Brain Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, where she directs the affective neuroscience laboratory.