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Targeted memory reactivation of rescripted content during sleep to reduce intrusive memories of traumatic film content

Poster Session D - Monday, March 9, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Neda R. Morakabati^1,2 (), Ria Karve^1,2, Megan E. Vermillion^1,2, Andrea S. Gutierrez^1,2, Maya Pourreza^1,2, Hannah H. Kim^1,2, Eitan Schechtman^1,2; ¹University of California, Irvine, ²Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, UC Irvine

Individuals living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) often experience intrusive, trauma-related memories that come to mind inadvertently. They are often distressing and can prevent those with PTSD from living full lives. Imagery Rescripting Therapy (ImR) is an effective therapy used to re-script the traumatic narrative into a more positive, resolved outcome, resulting in decreased symptoms. Our study leveraged sleep’s established benefit for memory consolidation to promote ImR and reduce intrusions in an analogue trauma design. Targeted memory reactivation (TMR), a technique to unobtrusively reactivate specific memories during sleep, has recently been used to reactivate ImR of autobiographical memories and improve emotionality for these memories. In our study, participants watched a distressing film then engaged in an adapted version of ImR to rescript the film’s content. They then took a nap in one of three conditions: TMR targeting the rescripted ending, TMR of neutral content, and no-TMR. We compared the number of intrusions between groups and noticed a trend towards less intrusive memories for consolidation biased towards the resolved ending. We will also analyze electroencephalography data from the nap to determine which spectral bands most predict this effect. These results inform us on how sleep is involved with trauma recovery, potential issues with consolidating unprocessed versions of the trauma, and most importantly the potential benefits of TMR, an at-home scalable intervention for clinical populations.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Emotion-cognition interactions