MAEBASHI -- A Gunma University research team has identified protein that blocks animals' bad past experiences from entering their fear memory, team members said.

The finding on their experiments using mice will be announced shortly in a U.S. neuroscience magazine.

Researchers led by instructor Nobuhiko Kojima say that the finding could help cure post-traumatic stress disorders that are believed to be caused by excessive fear memory.

In their experiments, the team paid attention to the function of ICER, a kind of protein that is generated in the bodies of excited animals, believing that animals feel excessive fear when their nerve cells are excited.

The team prevented one mouse from forming ICER in its body and, together with another one that forms an excessive amount of the protein through gene manipulation, compared them with an ordinary mouse to see their reactions to electric shocks.

A buzzer was sounded as the three mice were given electric shocks. The following day, the buzzer was sounded near them again.

The team found that the period when the body of the mouse that cannot form ICER in its body contracted out of fear was twice the time when the ordinary mouse's body contracted. The time when the body of the mouse that forms excessive ICER contracted was less than half of that of the ordinary mouse.

In experiments of pleasant experiences in which they were given a sugar solution, the team found no major differences in their reactions.

The results have proven that ICER helps restrict fear memory, say the researchers.

CREB has long been known as a protein that plays the role of an accelerator in forming memory.

Kojima said fear memory may be able to be controlled by adjusting the balance between ICER and CREB.

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