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The Neuropsychotherapist issue 10 January 2015
4
Understanding
Memory Reconsolidation
Bruce Ecker
Coherence Psychology Institute
This article is excerpted and adapted from
“Memory Reconsolidation Understood and Misunderstood” by Bruce Ecker in the
International Journal of Neuropsychotherapy, vol. 3, 2015.
www.neuropsychotherapist.com 5
The Neuropsychotherapist
EXTENSIVE RESEARCH BY NEUROSCIENTISTS since the late
1990s has found that the brain is innately equipped with a potent
process, known as memory reconsolidation, that can fundamen-
tally modify or erase a targeted, specic learning, even complex hu-
man emotional learnings formed subcortically, outside of awareness
(Pine, Mendelsohn, & Dudai, 2014; for reviews see, for example, Agren, 2014;
Reichelt & Lee, 2013). Such learnings are found to underlie and drive most
of the problems and symptoms that people address in psychotherapy and
counseling (Toomey & Ecker, 2007; Ecker & Toomey, 2008), so the relevance
and value of memory reconsolidation for the clinical eld are profound.
To describe a particular learning as “erased” means that its behavioral, emotional, cog-
nitive, and somatic manifestations disappear completely, and no further eort of any
kind is required to maintain this nullication permanently. Such lasting, transforma-
tional change is the therapeutic ideal. There is growing evidence that in erasure, the
neural encoding of the target learning is nullied (Clem & Huganir, 2010; Debiec, Díaz-
Mataix, Bush, Doyère, & LeDoux, 2010; Díaz-Mataix, Debiec, LeDoux, & Doyère,
2011; Jarome et al., 2012). The discovery of an erasure process was something of an
upheaval, reversing a rmly established conclusion, based on nearly a century of
research, that subcortical emotional learnings were indelible for the lifetime of the
The Neuropsychotherapist issue 10 January 2015
6
work are susceptible to misconceptions.
I have been observing misconceptions as
they have developed for nearly a decade
as of this writing, and they are increasing
as awareness of the importance of recon-
solidation builds at an accelerating pace.
In fact, sizable conceptual errors are being
propagated widely in articles by science
journalists in the popular media, in articles
by psychologists in peer-reviewed jour-
nals, in posts by psychotherapists in online
clinical discussion groups, and, surprisingly,
even in articles and talks by some neurosci-
entists involved in reconsolidation research
(Ecker, 2014).
Thus there is a growing need for a clear
map of the new territory, showing where
the path of understanding branches o into
the various misunderstandings of memory
reconsolidation.
Such a guide has now been published
(Ecker, 2015), examining ten widespread
misconceptions. Three of those ten are dis-
cussed in the current article, which is ex-
cerpted and adapted from the longer one.
The three misconceptions addressed here
are these:
• Misconception: The reconsolidation
process is triggered by the reactivation of a
target learning or memory.
• Misconception: Anxiety, phobias and
PTSD are the symptoms that memory re-
consolidation could help to dispel in psycho-
therapy, but more research must be done
before it is clear how reconsolidation can be
utilized clinically.
• Misconception: What is erased thera-
peutically is the negative emotion that be-
came associated with certain event memo-
individual (LeDoux, Romanski, & Xagoraris,
1989; Milner, Squire, & Kandel, 1998).
I began studying reconsolidation re-
search ndings in 2005, at about the twen-
ty-year point of my psychotherapy practice.
Neuroscientists’ densely technical accounts
of their studies have been comprehensible
to me, for the most part, thanks to my rst
career of 14 years as a research physicist,
and it quickly became apparent to me that
knowledge of reconsolidation could drive
the evolution of the eld of psychotherapy
in major ways. The process that brings about
erasure is so fundamental for potent, eec-
tive psychotherapy, and so sweeping in the
advances that it delivers to the clinical eld,
that I refocused my clinical career on trans-
lating reconsolidation research into clinical
practice. This has produced a versatile, inte-
grative methodology of psychotherapy and
a conceptual framework that maps out how
knowledge of reconsolidation creates four
major advances for the clinical eld (Ecker,
2011; Ecker, Ticic, & Hulley, 2012, 2013a,b).
These advances are: a new level of eec-
tiveness for individual clinicians, the deep
unication of seemingly diverse methods
and systems of psychotherapy, clarication
of the much-debated role of attachment
in the therapeutic process, and a decisive
breakthrough beyond nonspecic common
factors theory and the almost 80-year-long
“dodo bird verdict” that has appeared to
limit all therapy systems to the same mod-
est level of ecacy.
Understanding memory reconsolidation
involves learning some new ways of think-
ing that dier from familiar concepts of psy-
chotherapeutic change and may even seem
counterintuitive initially. Therefore, vari-
ous aspects of the reconsolidation frame-
www.neuropsychotherapist.com 7
The Neuropsychotherapist
ries, and this negative emotion is erased by
inducing positive emotional responses to
replace it.
For readers not yet familiar with memory
reconsolidation, next is a short overview as
the context for discussion of the misconcep-
tions..
Memory Reconsolidation in Context
Memory reconsolidation is the brain’s
innate process for fundamentally revis-
ing an existing learning and the acquired
behavioral responses and/or state of mind
maintained by that learning. In the recon-
solidation process, a target learning is rst
rendered revisable at the level of its neural
encoding, and then revision of its encod-
ing is brought about either through new
learning or chemical agents (for reviews see
Agren, 2014; Reichelt & Lee, 2013). Through
suitably designed new learning, the target
learning’s manifestation can be strength-
ened, weakened, altered in its details, or
completely nullied and canceled (erased).
Erasure through new learning during the
reconsolidation process is the true unlearn-
ing of the target learning. When erasure
through new learning is carried out in psy-
chotherapy, the client experiences a pro-
found release from the grip of a distressing
acquired response (Ecker et al., 2012). The
use of chemical agents to produce erasure is
described later in this article.
In order to see the full signicance of
memory reconsolidation for psychothera-
py, it is necessary to recognize the extensive
role of learning and memory in shaping each
person’s unique patterns of behavior, emo-
tion, thoughts, and somatic experience.
Among the many types of learning and the
many types of memory, the type responsi-
ble for the great majority of the problems
and symptoms that bring people to psycho-
therapy is implicit emotional learning—es-
pecially the implicit learning of vulnerabili-
ties and suerings that are urgent to avoid,
and how to avoid them. These learnings
form usually with no awareness of learning
anything, and they form in the presence of
strong emotion, which greatly enhances
their power and durability (McGaugh, 1989;
McGaugh & Roozendaal, 2002; Roozendaal,
McEwen, & Chattarji, 2009).
For example, if a small child consistently
receives frightening anger from a parent
in response to the child expressing needs,
the child learns not to express or even feel
needs or distress and not to expect under-
standing or comfort from others. This learn-
ing can occur with no representation in
conscious thoughts or conceptualization,
entirely in the implicit learning system. The
child congures him- or herself according to
this adaptive learning in order to minimize
suering in that family environment. Later
in life, however, this same learned pattern
has life-shaping, extremely costly personal
consequences. The learnings in this exam-
ple are very well-dened, yet they form and
operate with no conscious awareness of the
learned pattern or its self-protective, coher-
ent emotional purpose and necessity. From
outside of awareness these learnings shape
the child’s and later the adult’s behavior, so
the individual is completely unaware of liv-
ing according to these specic learnings.
The neural circuits encoding these learn-
ings are mainly in subcortical regions of
implicit memory that store implicit, tacit,
emotionally urgent, procedural knowledge,
not mainly in neocortical regions of explic-
it memory that store conscious, episodic,
autobiographical, declarative knowledge
(Schore, 2003).
As in the example above, the vast ma-
jority of the unwanted moods, emotions,
behaviors, and thoughts that people seek
to change in psychotherapy are found to
arise from implicit emotional learnings, not
in awareness (Toomey & Ecker, 2007). Of
course, some psychological and behavio-
ral symptoms are not caused by emotional
The vast majority of the unwanted moods, emotions, behaviors, and
thoughts that people seek to change in psychotherapy are found to arise
from implicit emotional learnings, not in awareness
The Neuropsychotherapist issue 10 January 2015
8
learnings—for example, hypothyroidism-
induced depression, autism, and biochemi-
cal addiction—but it is implicit emotional
learnings that therapists and their clients
are working to overcome in most cases.
It is the tenacity of implicit emotional
learnings, more than their ubiquity, that is
the real clinical challenge. On a daily basis,
psychotherapists encounter the extreme
durability of original emotional learnings
that fully maintain their chokehold dec-
ades after they rst formed. Researchers
too have observed that “A unique feature
of preferences [the authors use that term
to denote compelling, emotionally complex
avoidances and attractions] is that they re-
main relatively stable over one’s lifetime.
This resilience has also been observed ex-
perimentally, where . . . acquired preferenc-
es appear to be resistant to extinction train-
ing protocols” (Pine et al., 2014, p. 1). The
life-constraining grip of such patterns is the
bane of psychotherapists and their clients,
yet that very tenacity is a survival-positive
result of natural selection. In the course of
evolution, selection pressures crafted the
brain so that any learning accompanied by
strong emotion becomes encoded by en-
hanced, exceptionally durable synapses due
to the emotion-related hormones that inu-
ence synapse formation (McGaugh, 1989;
McGaugh & Roozendaal, 2002; Roozendaal
et al., 2009).
So durable are implicit emotional learn-
ings that they continue to function and drive
responses even during states of amnesia
and are only temporarily suppressed, not
erased, by the process of extinction (non-
reinforcement of a reactivated, learned ex-
pectation). Psychologists and neuroscien-
tists have amassed extensive evidence that
even after complete extinction of an emo-
tionally learned response, the extinguished
response is easily retriggered in various
ways. This revealed that extinction training
does not result in the unlearning, elimina-
tion, or erasure of the suppressed, origi-
nal learning (making the term “extinction”
something of a misnomer, suggesting as it
does a permanent disappearance). Rather,
the research found that extinction train-
ing forms a separate, second learning that
competes against, but does not change, the
original learning (see, e.g., Bouton, 2004;
Foa & McNally, 1996; Milner et al., 1998;
Myers & Davis, 2002).
Many decades of studying extinction led
researchers to the conclusion that implicit
emotional learnings are permanent and in-
delible for the lifetime of the individual once
they have been installed in long-term mem-
ory circuits through the process of consoli-
dation (reviewed in McGaugh, 2000). There
appeared to exist no form of neuroplasti-
city capable of unlocking the synapses of
consolidated implicit memory circuits. The
tenet of indelibility reached its peak inu-
ence with the publication of a research arti-
cle on extinction studies by neuroscientists
LeDoux, Romanski, and Xagoraris (1989)
titled “Indelibility of Subcortical Emotional
Memories.” The indelibility model soon en-
tered the literature of psychotherapy when
www.neuropsychotherapist.com 9
The Neuropsychotherapist
Year Authors Species Memory type Design and ndings
2004 Pedreira et al. Crab Contextual fear
memory
Reactivated learned expectation of visual threat must be sharply discon-
rmed for memory to be disrupted by cycloheximide.
2005 Frenkel et al. Crab Contextual fear
memory
New experience modies memory expression only if preceded by a
memory mismatch experience.
2005 Galluccio Human Operant condition-
ing
Memory is erased only by being reactivated along with a novel contin-
gency.
2005 Rodriguez-Or-
tiz et al.
Rat Taste recognition
memory
Novel taste following reactivation allows memory disruption by anisomy-
cin.
2006 Morris et al. Rat Spatial memory of
escape from danger
After reactivation, only a change of the learned safe position allows
disruption of original memory by anisomycin.
2006 Rossato et al. Rat Spatial memory of
escape from danger
After reactivation, only a change of the learned safe position allows
disruption of original memory by anisomycin.
2007 Forcato et al. Human Declarative memory Memory of syllable pairings learned visually is destabilized and impaired
by new learning only if, after reactivation by presentation of context, pre-
sentation of a syllable to be paired does not occur as expected, creating
mismatch.
2007 Rossato et al. Rat Object recognition
memory
Memory is disrupted by anisomycin only if reactivated in presence of
novel object.
2008 Rodriguez-Or-
tiz et al.
Rat Spatial memory of
escape from danger
After reactivation, only a change of the learned safe position allows
disruption of original memory by anisomycin.
2009 Forcato et al. Human Declarative memory Memory of syllable pairings learned visually is labilized and lost only if
reactivation is followed by learning revised novel pairings.
2009 Pérez-Cuesta
& Maldonado
Crab Contextual fear
memory
Reactivated learned expectation of visual threat must be sharply discon-
rmed for memory to be disrupted by cycloheximide.
2009 Winters et al. Rat Object recognition
memory
Memory is disrupted by MK-801 only if reactivated in presence of novel
contextual features.
2010 Forcato et al. Human Declarative memory Memory of syllable pairings learned visually destabilizes and incorpo-
rates new information only if, after reactivation, the expected opportunity
to match syllables does not occur, creating mismatch.
2011 Coccoz et al. Human Declarative memory Memory of syllable pairings learned visually destabilizes, allowing a mild
stressor to strengthen memory, only if, after reactivation, the expected
opportunity to match syllables does not occur, creating mismatch.
2012 Caffaro et al. Crab Contextual fear
memory
New experience modies memory expression only if preceded by a
memory mismatch experience.
2012 Sevenster et
al.
Human Associative fear
memory (classical
conditioning)
Reactivated fear memory is erased by propranolol only if prediction error
is also experienced.
2013 Balderas et al. Rat Object recognition
memory
Only if memory updating is required does reactivation trigger memo-
ry destabilization and reconsolidation, allowing memory disruption by
anisomycin.
2013 Barreiro et al. Crab Contextual fear
memory
Only if memory reactivation is followed by unexpected, mismatching
experience is the memory eliminated by glutamate antagonist.
2013 Díaz-Mataix
et al.
Rat Associative fear
memory (classical
conditioning)
Reactivated fear memory is erased by anisomycin only if prediction error
is also experienced.
2013 Reichelt et al. Rat Goal-tracking mem-
ory
Blockage of brain’s prediction error signals prevented target memory
destabilization or disruption by MK-801.
2013 Sevenster et
al.
Human Associative fear
memory (classical
conditioning)
Reactivated fear memory is destabilized, allowing disruption by proprano-
lol, only if prediction-error-driven relearning is also experienced.
2014 Sevenster et
al.
Human Associative fear
memory (classical
conditioning)
Reactivated fear memory is destabilized, allowing disruption by propran-
olol, only if prediction-error-driven relearning is also experienced, and
termination of prediction error terminates destabilzation.
Table 1. Studies demonstrating that both memory reactivation and memory mismatch (prediction error)
are necessary for inducing memory destabilization (deconsolidation) and reconsolidation, and that memory
reactivation alone is insucient.
The Neuropsychotherapist issue 10 January 2015
10
van der Kolk (1994) published in the Harvard
Review of Psychiatry his seminal article “The
Body Keeps the Score: Memory and the
Evolving Psychobiology of Posttraumatic
Stress,” in which there was a section titled
“Emotional memories are forever.” The
conclusion that implicit emotional learn-
ings persist for a lifetime meant that people
could never become fundamentally free of
are-ups of childhood emotional condition-
ing. The worst experiences in an individual’s
past could at any time become reactivated
and seize his or her state of mind or behav-
ior in the present.
Then, several studies published from
1997 to 2000 suddenly overturned the mod-
el of irreversible memory consolidation and
indelibility. Neuroscientists in several dif-
ferent laboratories resumed studying the
eects of reactivating an established emo-
tional learning (Nader, Schafe, & LeDoux,
2000; Przybyslawski, Roullet, & Sara, 1999;
Przybyslawski & Sara, 1997; Roullet & Sara,
1998; Sara, 2000; Sekiguchi, Yamada, & Su-
zuki, 1997). Using sophisticated new tech-
niques as well as the eld’s advanced knowl-
edge of exactly where in the brain certain
emotional learnings form and are stored in
memory, researchers again demonstrated
the full elimination of any expression of a
target learning. In addition, they demon-
strated that such erasure of the learning
became possible because consolidated,
locked memory synapses had returned to a
deconsolidated, unlocked, unstable or “la-
bile” state, allowing erasure of the learning
by chemical agents that disrupt only syn-
apses that are in an unstable, nonconsoli-
dated condition. The longstanding tenet of
irreversible consolidation was disconrmed.
The destabilized state of deconsolidation
was found to exist only soon after the target
learning had been reactivated by a suitable
cue or reminder. Yet, long after such a reac-
tivation, an implicit learning is found to be
once again in a stable, consolidated state.
Thus the detection of a deconsolidated,
destabilized state of memory soon after its
reactivation implied the existence of a natu-
ral process of reconsolidation, the relocking
of the synapses of a destabilized memory,
returning the memory to stability. Subse-
quent studies found that the labile state of
deconsolidation lasts for about ve hours—
a period widely known now as the reconsoli-
dation window—during which the unstable
target learning can be modied or erased
(Duvarci & Nader, 2004; Pedreira, Pérez-
Cuesta, & Maldonado, 2002; Pedreira &
Maldonado, 2003; Walker, Brakeeld, Hob-
son, & Stickgold, 2003). When a learned, un-
wanted emotional reaction is erased, there
is no loss of memory of events in one’s life
(as shown by Kindt, Soeter, & Vervliet, 2009,
and as illustrated by a clinical example later
in this article).
With that background, we can now ex-
amine the misconceptions of the reconsoli-
dation process listed above.
Misconception: The Reconsolidation
Process Is Triggered by the Reactivation
of a Target Learning or Memory
In the reconsolidation discovery studies
of 1997 to 2000, a state of deconsolidation
was found to exist only soon after the target
learning had been reactivated by a suitable
cue or reminder. This observation was inter-
preted by the researchers to mean that each
reactivation of a target learning deconsoli-
dates its neural circuits, launching the re-
consolidation process.
That conclusion may have been sensible
based on the initial few studies, but it turned
out to be incorrect. Pedreira, Pérez-Cuesta,
and Maldonado (2004) were rst to show
that reactivation alone does not bring about
deconsolidation and reconsolidation. They
concluded, “at odds with the usual view,
retrieval per se is unable to induce labiliza-
tion of the old memory” (p. 581), and they
demonstrated that what the brain requires
to trigger the reconsolidation process is re-
activation plus another critical experience,
described below. Subsequently, this same
two-step requirement has been demon-
strated in at least twenty-two other studies
that I have tallied as of this writing. They are
listed in Table 1. In the discovery studies of
1997 to 2000, researchers had fullled this
two-step requirement without awareness of
doing so, as shown later in this section.
The early interpretation that reactivation
by itself produces deconsolidation spread
widely among both neuroscientists and sci-
www.neuropsychotherapist.com 11
The Neuropsychotherapist
ence journalists and became a reconsolida-
tion meme. Despite the post-2004 piling
up of decisive evidence revealing that this
original conclusion was incorrect, it has con-
tinued to be asserted in new writings by not
only science journalists but also by some
prominent researchers who were involved
in the original studies, as well as by many
later reconsolidation researchers.
What, then, is the second step that must
accompany reactivation? Pedreira et al.
(2004), followed by all of the studies listed
in Table 1, have shown that in order to in-
duce reconsolidation, reactivation must be
accompanied or followed soon by what re-
searchers term a mismatch experience or
prediction error experience. This is an expe-
rience of something distinctly discrepant
with what the reactivated target memory
“knows” or expects—a surprising new learn-
ing consisting of anything from a superu-
ous but salient novelty element to a direct
contradiction of what is known according to
the target learning. It makes sense from an
evolutionary perspective that deconsolida-
tion and reconsolidation, being the brain’s
process for updating learnings and memo-
ries, would be triggered only by new infor-
mation that is at odds with the contents of
an existing learning (Lee, 2009). Lee wrote,
“reconsolidation is triggered by a violation
of expectation based upon prior learning,
whether such a violation is qualitative (the
outcome not occurring at all) or quantitative
(the magnitude of the outcome not being
fully predicted)” The studies listed in Table
1 have shown that the brain evolved so as
to launch de/reconsolidation only when an
experience of something discrepant with a
reactivated, learned expectation or model of
reality signals the need for an update of that
existing knowledge. This empirical nding of
a critical role of mismatch or prediction er-
ror can be regarded as a neurobiological val-
idation of a central feature of the learning
models of both Piaget (1955) and Rescorla
and Wagner (1972).
As stated by Agren (2014) in reviewing
research on reconsolidation of emotional
learnings in humans, “it would appear that
prediction error is vital for a reactivation
of memory to trigger a reconsolidation
process” (p. 73). Likewise, Delorenzi et al.
(2014) commented, “strong evidence sup-
ports the view that reconsolidation depends
on detecting mismatches between actual
and expected experiences” (p. 309). Exton-
McGuinness, Lee and Reichelt (2015, p. 375)
review the role of prediction errors in mem-
ory reconsolidation studies and sum up their
position by stating, “We propose that a pre-
diction error signal...is necessary for desta-
bilisation and subsequent reconsolidation
of a memory.” That is the research nding
that translates into major advances for the
psychotherapy eld (Ecker, 2011; Ecker et
al., 2012, 2013a,b).
For those advances to materialize, it is
necessary for clinicians to understand well
what the brain regards as an experience
of mismatch or prediction error. Miscon-
ceptions abound on this point as well. The
following example shows the meaning of
mismatch at the basic level of classical con-
ditioning in the laboratory, as demonstrated
by Pedreira et al. (2004) and other studies
listed in Table 1. Clinically relevant learnings
are often far more complex, and the guiding
of mismatch experiences in psychotherapy
looks very dierent, as a rule, from the labo-
ratory instances described in this article, but
the principles of mismatch are usefully clari-
ed at this basic level.
The study by Nader, Schafe and LeDoux
(2000), which repeated the basic design of
some other early studies (Przybyslawski et
al., 1997, 1999; Roullet et al., 1998), is often
regarded as the one that brought the initial
research to a tipping point of establishing
the reconsolidation phenomenon conclu-
sively. The mismatch requirement was dis-
covered four years later by Pedreira et al.
(2004), so Nader et al. were unaware of its
“it would appear that prediction error is vital for a reactivation of
memory to trigger a reconsolidation process”
The Neuropsychotherapist issue 10 January 2015
12
presence in their procedure. They used a
classical conditioning procedure in which
rats learned to expect an electric footshock
during the last half-second of a 30-second
audible tone. One day later, their procedure
accomplished memory reactivation with
the onset of the 30-second tone, and it ac-
complished memory mismatch with the o-
set of the tone with no shock occurring. That
mismatch of what the reactivated target
learning expected quickly triggered destabi-
lization of the target learning and launched
the reconsolidation process. Erasure of the
learned fear of the tone then was accom-
plished by promptly following the mismatch
with administration of anisomycin, which
destroys non-consolidated synapses but
has no eect on stable, consolidated ones.
If administered six hours later, after recon-
solidation (restabilization) had occurred and
the reconsolidation window was no longer
open, anisomycin had no eect and the fear
learning persisted.
Understanding the mismatch require-
ment allows us to interpret correctly the
results of various studies that were misin-
terpreted by the researchers because they
analyzed their studies without reference to
the mismatch requirement. The simple logic
of the situation, as stated by Agren (2014),
is that “the studies that have shown eects
of reconsolidation . . . must somehow have
induced a prediction error” (p. 80). Ecker
et al. (2012) articulated the same princi-
ple: “Whenever the markers of erasure of
a learning are observed, both reactivation
and a mismatch of that learning must have
taken place, unlocking its synapses, or eras-
ure could not have resulted. This logic can
serve as a useful guide for identifying the
critical steps of process in both the experi-
ments of researchers and the sessions of
psychotherapists” (p. 23).
For example, failure to achieve destabi-
lization of a reactivated target learning has
been reported in many studies (e.g., Cam-
marota, Bevilaqua, Medina, & Izquierdo,
2004; Hernandez & Kelley, 2004; Mileusnic,
Lancashire, & Rose, 2005), and we can now
recognize that the target learning remained
stable due to an absence of mismatch or
prediction error in the procedure used. (For
example, a rat’s memory that pressing a
certain lever brings a sugar reward was in-
deed reactivated when the rat was once
again placed in the chamber with the lever,
pressed it and received a sugar pellet (Her-
nandez & Kelley, 2004), but this reactivation
provided the expected reinforcement and
entailed no experience of prediction error,
so memory destabilization did not occur.)
All 23 studies listed in Table 1 have shown
that reactivation alone does not launch the
reconsolidation process, but reactivation
plus mismatch does. This point was particu-
larly emphasized by Forcato, Argibay, Pe-
dreira, and Maldonado (2009) in titling their
article, “Human reconsolidation does not
always occur when a memory is retrieved,”
and by Sevenster, Beckers, and Kindt (2012),
who titled theirs “Retrieval Per Se Is Not Suf-
cient to Trigger Reconsolidation of Human
Fear Memory.”
Reconsolidation can also be triggered by
a mismatch of when events are expected
to occur, with no change in what occurs, as
demonstrated by Díaz-Mataix, Ruiz Martin-
ez, Schafe, LeDoux, and Doyère (2013). On
Day 1 in their study, rats heard a 60-s tone
and received a momentary electrical shock
at the 30-s point, midway through the tone.
For each rat this was repeated 10 times to
create a reliable conditioned response of
fear to the tone. On Day 2, each rat heard the
tone and received the shock again just once,
reactivating the learned association of tone
and shock. The shock occurred at the same
30-s point for some rats, but for others it oc-
curred at the 10-s point. Immediately after
this reactivation experience, researchers
administered a chemical agent (anisomy-
cin) that disrupts nonconsolidated memory
circuits. On Day 3, the tone was played again
Whenever the markers of erasure of a learning are observed, both
reactivation and a mismatch of that learning must have taken place,
unlocking its synapses, or erasure could not have resulted.
www.neuropsychotherapist.com 13
The Neuropsychotherapist
for each of the rats ve times with no ac-
companying shock, and the strength of fear
responses was measured. Rats that had un-
changed shock timing on Day 2 reacted with
fear on Day 3 fully as strongly as they had
done on Day 2, indicating that anisomycin
had no eect and, therefore, that the reac-
tivation without mismatch on Day 2 had not
destabilized the target learning. In contrast,
rats whose shock timing had been changed
on Day 2 reacted on Day 3 with only half as
many fear responses as on Day 2, indicating
that anisomycin had signicantly impaired
the target learning and, therefore, that the
reactivation with timing mismatch on Day 2
had indeed destabilized the target learning.
A target learning that has been destabi-
lized by mismatch can be erased not only
by chemical agents, but also by a counter-
learning experience with no use of chemi-
cal agents. It is this endogenous approach
that is most desirable for psychotherapeu-
tic use and which has been applied exten-
sively in that context (Ecker et al., 2012).
In laboratory studies, endogenous erasure
or modication of a target learning has
been demonstrated with both animal and
human subjects (e.g., Galluccio, 2005; Liu
et al., 2014; Monls, Cowansage, Klann, &
LeDoux, 2009; Schiller et al. 2010; Stein-
furth et al., 2014; Walker et al., 2003; Xue et
al., 2012).
The experimental procedures discussed
in this section in relation to the mismatch
requirement illustrate a principle that is crit-
ical for understanding reconsolidation phe-
nomena: What does, or does not, constitute
a mismatch experience depends entirely on
the specic makeup of the target learning at
the time of mismatch. That is a principle that
I will refer to henceforth as mismatch rela-
tivity. It is essential for understanding the
eects of reconsolidation procedures used
in both laboratory studies and therapy ses-
sions. However, I have never seen this prin-
ciple articulated explicitly in research arti-
cles. Mindfulness of mismatch relativity is
critical for consistent outcomes in utilizing
reconsolidation in psychotherapy to bring
about transformational change. Only by at-
tending closely to the specic elements of
a symptom-generating emotional learning
can a psychotherapist reliably guide mis-
match experiences that disconrm those
specic elements, as is necessary for their
nullication and dissolution.
A question often asked by clinicians
learning about reconsolidation is: When my
panicky therapy client drives on the highway
and the feared terrible ery crash doesn’t
happen, that seems to be a mismatch expe-
rience, as needed to launch reconsolidation,
yet it doesn’t unlock or erase the learned
fear. Doesn’t this show that the model is
incorrect? To clarify this, we need to apply
the mismatch relativity principle and exam-
ine whether or not a mismatch experience
actually took place. That begins with exam-
ining the detailed makeup
of the target learning in
question. In this case, the
target learning is not that a
car crash happens on eve-
ry drive; rather it is that a
crash might happen un-
predictably on any drive.
That learning is not mis-
matched or disconrmed
by an accident not hap-
pening on any one drive or
on any number of drives.
A safe, uneventful drive
creates no prediction er-
ror and therefore does not
induce deconsolidation, so
the target learning is not
revised and the model has
not failed to apply.
This example naturally
raises the question: For
that target learning, what
would be a mismatch ex-
perience? The knowledge
that a crash might happen
unpredictably on any drive
is true as a recognition of
existential reality, so no
mismatch or disconrma-
tion of that knowledge is
possible. However, that
knowledge is not the en-
tire learning maintain-
ing the panicky dread of a
ery car crash. Some other
learning is responsible for
that emotional intensity,
The Neuropsychotherapist issue 10 January 2015
14
and it is for elements of that learning that
mismatches can be created. The most com-
mon form of this other learning, though
not the only possibility (see Ecker, 2003,
or Ecker & Hulley, 2000, for an account of
diverse learnings underlying anxiety and
panic symptoms), is suppressed traumatic
memory of the same or a similar kind, such
as a car crash, a ery explosion, the death
of high school classmates in a head-on col-
lision, a terrible scare from skidding on ice
on a mountain road or from being pulled
along very fast at 3 years old in a little wag-
on tied to the bicycle of an older sibling, and
so forth. The suppressed state of the trau-
matic memory preserves its emotionally
raw, unprocessed quality, including desper-
ate fear and helplessness. De-suppression
of the memory (in small enough steps to be
tolerable) reveals a set of specic elements,
each of which is a particular learning. It is
these component learnings that can now
be subjected to a mismatch experience. For
example, the helplessness felt and learned
in the original situation can in many cases
encounter a mismatch experience through
the technique of empowered reenactment,
which is widely used in trauma therapy to
create a vivid experience of potent self-pro-
tection in the original scene. For a detailed
clinical example of that kind, see Ecker et al.
(2012, pp. 86–91).
In summary of
this section, the
research ndings
on memory recon-
solidation represent
a nontheoretical
set of instructions
for bringing about
transformational
change in a target
learning. These in-
structions specify
that in order for
a target learning
to become desta-
bilized and sus-
ceptible to being
unlearned and nul-
lied, it must be
both reactivated
and subjected to a
mismatch or prediction error experience.
The mismatch relativity principle has been
introduced here, within the exercise of
analyzing the occurrence of mismatch in
published studies, to emphasize that what
is, and what is not, a mismatch experience
is always dened in relation to the specic
elements of the target learning and what
the target learning “knows” or expects.
This needed exercise of examining the role
of mismatch in published studies will con-
tinue in each of the next two sections. (For
numerous examples of creating mismatch
experiences in psychotherapy, see Ecker et
al., 2012, Chapters 3 to 6.)
Misconception: Anxiety, Phobias, and
PTSD Are the Symptoms That Memory
Reconsolidation Could Help to Dispel in
Psychotherapy, but More Research Must
Be Done Before It Is Clear How Reconsoli-
dation Can Be Utilized Clinically
Here we have a blend of two misconcep-
tions. First is the view that for clinical use,
reconsolidation could be suitable for help-
ing to dispel learned fears of various kinds,
with symptomology such as PTSD, phobias,
panic attacks and anxiety. This impression
probably stems from the consistent ten-
dency of researchers to comment in their
research articles that reconsolidation has
signicant potential for treatment of PTSD
and anxiety disorders. Researchers have to
be ultra-conservative in what they write so
that everything they propose is rmly based
on what is known according to the current
state of research Fear learnings are a rela-
tively safe zone for researchers when com-
menting on future application because fear
can be induced and measured under con-
trolled conditions in the laboratory more re-
liably and accurately than other emotions.
Consequently fear learning has been stud-
ied and understood far more thoroughly
than other emotional responses.
In fact, however, reconsolidation re-
search has already demonstrated that the
process applies to many types of learning
other than fear learnings—for example, ap-
petitive (pleasure) learnings (Stollho et al.,
2005), operant (instrumental) learnings (Ex-
ton-McGuinness, Patton, Sacco & Lee, 2014;
Gallucio, 2005), spatial learnings (Rossato
www.neuropsychotherapist.com 15
The Neuropsychotherapist
et al., 2006), object recognition learnings
(Rossato et al., 2007), motor task learnings
(Walker et al., 2003), taste recognition learn-
ings (Rodriguez-Ortiz, De la Cruz, Gutierrez,
& Bermidez-Rattoni, 2005), human declara-
tive learnings (Forcato et al., 2007), human
episodic learnings (Hupbach, Gomez, Hardt,
& Nadel, 2007), and emotionally compel-
ling human preferences (Pine, et al., 2014),
among others. In fact, to my knowledge, as
of this writing, all tested types of learning
and memory have been found to submit to
the process of reconsolidation.
That is extremely good news for psycho-
therapy, as the learnings that underlie and
drive individuals’ problems and symptoms
are of many dierent kinds and not neces-
sarily fear-based. Examples include: the ex-
pectation to be allowed no autonomy and
reliance on secrecy and lying to maintain
personal power; the expectation of severe
devaluing and derision by others for any
mistake or misstep, generating paralyzing
states of shame, inhibition and procrastina-
tion.
The second misconception in this cat-
egory is this: In reconsolidation research
articles, the authors typically comment that
much more research must be done before it
is clear how reconsolidation can be utilized
in psychotherapy. This is hardly the case. In
reality, for over a decade before neurosci-
entists’ discovery in 2004 of the sequence
of experiences that triggers reconsolida-
tion (Pedreira et al., 2004), psychothera-
pists had been knowingly guiding clients
through that sequence, having recognized
from clinical observations that it was re-
sponsible for transformational therapeutic
change (as described below). Furthermore,
since 2006, psychotherapists have been
translating reconsolidation research nd-
ings into successful therapeutic methodol-
ogy. In 2006 I gave a keynote address to a
conference of psychologists and psycho-
therapists (Ecker, 2006), describing the criti-
cal sequence of experiences that is required,
according to reconsolidation research, for
erasing a target emotional learning. In that
talk, a clinical case example from my prac-
tice illustrated the guiding of that sequence
and the resulting permanent disappearance
of a longstanding, intense emotional reac-
tion. In subsequent years, many articles and
conference talks have presented the critical
sequence in many clinical case examples of
using it to decisively dispel a wide range of
symptoms and problems (e.g., Ecker, 2008,
2010, 2013; Ecker, Ticic, & Hulley, 2012,
2013a,b; Ecker & Toomey, 2008; Sibson &
Ticic, 2014).
Note that according to current neurosci-
ence, memory reconsolidation is the only
known process and type of neuroplasticity
that can produce what we have been observ-
ing clinically: the abrupt, permanent disap-
pearance of a strong, longstanding, involun-
tary emotional and/or behavioral response,
with no further counteractive measures re-
quired. So, in psychotherapy we have been
guiding the same well-dened sequence of
experiences and observing the same distinc-
tive signs of erasure as reconsolidation re-
searchers have. We have applied the process
successfully to the real-life, highly complex
emotional learnings that underlie and main-
tain symptoms of many dierent types (see
citations in the previous paragraph). Also,
successful clinical use of protocols designed
to induce reconsolidation and erasure have
been reported by Högberg et al. (2011) and
Xue et al. (2012). The latter demonstrated,
in a controlled study, a strong degree of
elimination of heroin addicts’ cue-induced
craving for heroin.
Thus the new era of the psychotherapy of
memory reconsolidation is well underway. It
had a curious birth: From 1986 to 1993, my
clinical colleague Laurel Hulley and I closely
scrutinized the occasional therapy sessions
in our practices in which abrupt, liberating
change had somehow occurred—the last-
ing cessation of a problematic pattern of
Memory reconsolidation is the only known process and type of neuroplasticity
that can produce the abrupt, permanent disappearance of a strong,
longstanding, involuntary emotional and/or behavioral response, with no further
counteractive measures required.
The Neuropsychotherapist issue 10 January 2015
16
emotion, behavior, cognition and/or somat-
ics. Finally we identied a sequence of ex-
periences that was always present, across
a wide range of clients and symptoms,
whenever such transformational change oc-
curred. We developed a system of therapy
focused on facilitating that key sequence
of experiences right from the rst session
of therapy, and found that working in this
way made our sessions far more consistent
in producing transformational therapeu-
tic breakthroughs. We began teaching this
methodology in 1993 at a workshop in Tuc-
son, Arizona, followed by our rst published
account of it in the volume Depth Oriented
Brief Therapy (Ecker & Hulley, 1996). Subse-
quently the same sequence of experiences
emerged in reconsolidation research, pro-
viding corroboration of our clinical observa-
tions by empirical, rigorous studies
Our psychotherapy system, now known
as coherence therapy, guides the series of
experiences required by the brain for re-
consolidation and erasure to occur, creating
transformational change (Ecker & Hulley,
2011). It is the only system of psychothera-
py that explicitly calls for and maps directly
onto the process identied in reconsolida-
tion research, but there are many other sys-
tems of therapy in which the same process
also takes place, albeit embedded within
methodologies conceptualized quite dier-
ently. It is clear that no single school of psy-
chotherapy “owns” the process that induces
memory reconsolidation, because it is a uni-
versal process, inherent in the brain. In any
therapy sessions, the occurrence of trans-
formational change can now be presumed
to mean that reconsolidation and erasure of
the target response have occurred, whether
or not the therapist was knowingly guiding
that process. Toward conrming that uni-
versality, we began an ongoing project of
explicitly identifying the embedded steps of
the reconsolidation and erasure process in
published case examples of various forms of
psychotherapy (Ecker et al., 2012, chapter 6;
for updated list, see http://bit.ly/15Z00HQ).
Thus, knowledge of memory reconsoli-
dation can enhance the eectiveness of in-
dividual psychotherapists and, in addition, it
translates into a unifying framework of psy-
chotherapy integration, in which the many
dierent systems of therapy form a huge
repertoire of ways to guide the brain’s core
process of transformational change. This
framework gives practitioners of dierent
therapies a shared understanding of their
action and a shared vocabulary for their ac-
tion.
Misconception: What Is Erased in Ther-
apy Is the Negative Emotion That Became
Associated With Certain Event Memories,
and This Negative Emotion Is Erased by
Inducing Positive or Neutral Emotional
Responses to Replace It
A case vignette from my psychotherapy
practice will serve to illustrate the clinical
guiding of memory reconsolidation and in
particular it will show that the what is erased
by the process is not a therapy client’s prob-
lematic emotion (or any other manifested
symptom), but rather the learned schema
or model of reality generating that emotion.
The client, a married woman, aged 50
and the mother of one child, sought therapy
to dispel her aversion to sexuality with her
husband, her depression, and her panic at-
tacks, all of which had been aicting her
for at least a decade. I was using coherence
therapy, in which the nonconscious, implicit
emotional learnings that underlie and drive
a given symptom are rst brought into di-
rect, explicit awareness, and then subjected
to the process of memory reconsolidation
and erasure, creating transformational
change.
Session by session, into explicit aware-
ness was emerging a complex array of un-
derlying, implicit emotional learnings, some
of which involved traumatic memories from
Knowledge of memory reconsolidation can enhance the
eectiveness of individual psychotherapists and, in addition, it
translates into a unifying framework of psychotherapy integration.
www.neuropsychotherapist.com 17
The Neuropsychotherapist
various developmental stages of her life. In
her rst session I found that she would dis-
sociate and become glazed and wooden in
response to even a small step of interior ex-
ploration. She had a total of 45 sessions and
was symptom-free at the end. This vignette
focuses only on the particular emotional
learning that emerged in her ninth session.
This learning had formed when she was 18
years of age and had become pregnant by
her boyfriend while living with her parents
in a conservative town. She was living in
shame and “desperate loneliness,” did not
want the baby or the boyfriend, and was
struggling to decide about having an abor-
tion when she had a miscarriage.
Wanting to nd the emotional learn-
ings she had formed in this ordeal, I gently
guided her into experientially revisiting and
reinhabiting that situation imaginally, and
voicing her thoughts and feelings in pre-
sent tense. This technique is often useful
for bringing the implicit meanings of the
original experience into explicit awareness.
She seemed absorbed in the subjective real-
ity of this material, and her voice was soft
but somber as she said, “In this town, a girl
who’s been pregnant outside of marriage is
just ruined, completely ruined.”
In order to elicit fully and explicitly the
learning she had formed, I asked softly,
“What does ‘ruined’ really mean? What’s go-
ing to happen to you now?”
After a silence, in an even quieter voice
she said, “The rest of my life as a woman is
ruined. I’ll never marry, and I’ll never have
children.” There it was, the specic learn-
ing she had formed. According to this learn-
ing, which had been implicit and outside of
awareness for decades, having sex had re-
sults that had ruined the rest of her life. Im-
mediately I understood that this dire model
of her future was a potent source of both
her depression and her sexual aversion.
With this clarity about the makeup of this
target learning, I saw a possible way to cre-
ate a contradictory experience: use of the
brain’s automatic detection of mismatches,
a background process that is always scan-
ning current conscious experience. So in
reply to her words, I said, “Please say that
again.”
Somberly, and
clearly feeling the
emotional reality of
the words, she said
again, “The rest of
my life as a woman
is ruined. I’ll never
marry, and I’ll never
have children.” As
soon as she spoke
the words this time,
her wider conscious
knowledge net-
works registered
this information,
which was new
to her conscious
networks though it was old in her implicit
memory system. Her head made an abrupt
movement, and in a sharper, louder voice
she said with obvious surprise, “Wait—that’s
not true! I did marry! I did have a child!”
This rst encounter between the target
learning and vivid contradictory knowledge
was the mismatch experience or prediction
error needed for deconsolidating the target
learning. This both-at-once experience of
the target learning and vivid contradictory
knowledge is termed a juxtaposition experi-
ence in coherence therapy to emphasize the
simultaneous activation of the two as co-
present conscious experiences.
Note that in this instance, the mismatch-
ing knowledge—“I did marry! I did have a
child!”—was familiar, ordinary knowledge
that was very real to her experientially, as
real and certain as her own existence, but
it was not inherently emotional in qual-
ity. It would not normally induce emotional
arousal by itself. For successful mismatch,
the knowledge or experience utilized must
feel decisively real to the person on the basis
of his or her own living experience, but that
does not require this mismatching knowl-
edge to be emotionally arousing in itself,
even though the target learning is strongly
emotional
Presumably the neural encoding main-
taining “My life as a woman is ruined, I’ll
never marry, I’ll never have children” was
now rapidly destabilizing, opening that set
of learned meanings to being rewritten and
erased by the knowledge, “I did marry! I did
The Neuropsychotherapist issue 10 January 2015
18
have a child! My life isn’t ruined!”
She said in almost a whisper, “That just
feels huge.” Then her head tipped back
against the top of her chair, and she gazed
at the ceiling with blinking eyes. Then her
eyes closed, and after about ten seconds she
said, “I feel tingling and buzzing all over my
body. It’s weird—I can feel the skin between
my toes. It’s huge, it’s huge.” Internally she
was repeatedly beholding and marveling
at the new realization, which served as the
several repetitions of it needed for rewriting
the now deconsolidated target learning. For
good measure, I soon created an explicit,
out-loud repetition by jokingly saying, “I’m
seeing an image of you running down the
street waving your arms and shouting, ‘I did
get married! I did have a child! My life wasn’t
ruined!’” She laughed heartily at that, but
even before I said it, her mood had shifted
into a happy lilt that I had never seen in her
before. Her contradictory knowledge was
not emotional in itself, but the liberating ef-
fect of its use in the reconsolidation process
certainly was.
I then reminded her that in our previous
session she had raised a major question:
“Why did I start feeling unbearable sad-
ness and depression when I became preg-
nant with my son 13 years ago?” I asked her,
“Does today’s session help you see why?”
Her eyes widened with this further powerful
realization that the later pregnancy had ree-
voked her emotional memory of the much
earlier one, reimmersing her in the complex
emotional miseries that accompanied that
pregnancy and the miscarriage. She said,
“Ohhh—that’s an amazing insight.”
After that session, her longstanding de-
pressed mood was gone and did not return.
This conrmed that the targeted learning
had been producing that mood, and that
erasure or dissolution of that learning had
been accomplished—meaning that “I’ll nev-
er marry, I’ll never have children” no longer
felt real or true in any memory network. Her
depressed mood had been the conscious
surface of the unconscious despair and grief
generated by the target learning.
That session was also the beginning of
the end of her sexual aversion, which was
dispelled after several more sessions that
revealed a number of other episodes in her
life where great suering had resulted from
or accompanied sex. Finally she no longer
felt any urge to avoid her husband’s over-
tures, though she did feel vulnerable and
cautious about entering into a new level of
sexuality with him. Those of course were
natural, appropriate feelings, and I coached
her on expressing to him her need for him to
sensitively honor her pace and her cues.
Her panics attacks proved to be based in
yet other emotional learnings. They ceased
after the discovery and dissolution of those
other learnings through juxtaposition expe-
riences tailored to them.
The vignette illustrates the lifelong du-
rability of original emotional implicit learn-
ings or schemas, as well as their dissociated,
encapsulated state, which keeps them insu-
lated from and immune to new experiences
and new knowledge formed later in life.
By being retrieved into conscious, explicit
awareness, emotional implicit learnings be-
come fully available for contact with other,
disconrming knowledge that can induce
transformational change through juxtaposi-
tion (mismatch) experiences.
Thus, for consistently guiding decisive
change through the reconsolidation process
in therapy, the required reactivation of a
target learning has to be its reactivation as a
conscious, explicit experience of the retrieved,
specic elements of the target model (such
as “I’ll never marry or have children, so my
life as a woman is ruined”), not merely the
retriggering of a still nonconscious, unre-
trieved implicit schema. Such implicit learn-
ings are often retriggered in day-to-day life
without conscious awareness, and often
life also provides strong disconrmations,
but because the schema remains outside of
awareness, there is no juxtaposition experi-
ence—no conscious coexperiencing of both
the old and new knowledge of what’s real—
and therefore no change takes place.
As this clinical example shows, what is
erased through the reconsolidation process
is a specic, learned schema or model or
template of reality, verbalized in the exam-
ple as “I’ll never marry or have children, so
my life as a woman is ruined.” That schema
was the target for erasure, and the mis-
match that deconsolidated and then nul-
lied it consisted of experiencing a sharp
www.neuropsychotherapist.com 19
The Neuropsychotherapist
disconrmation of that specic schema. With disso-
lution of the schema, the negative emotions that it
was generating (despair, grief, and depression) dis-
appeared, though those emotions were not them-
selves the target for mismatch or erasure, and the
mismatch did not consist of creating a positive or
neutral emotion instead of despair and depression.
Notice also that the client’s negative emotion
was arising directly from her existing model of the
rest of her life, not from episodic memory (event
memory) of the traumatic pregnancy and miscar-
riage. In other words, the traumatic experience re-
sulted in her model (which is semantic memory),
and that model in turn generated and maintained
her emotional symptoms. Erasure of that model
caused no loss of autobiographical memory.
Therapy clients’ unwanted symptoms and prob-
lems are of course not limited to negative emo-
tions, but can also be behaviors, thoughts, disso-
ciated states, somatic sensations or conditions, or
any combination of these. In any case, the target for
erasure is not the manifested symptom or problem.
The target is the learned implicit schema or seman-
tic structure that underlies and drives production
of the symptom. Erasure occurs when the target
schema is activated as a conscious, explicit experi-
ence and is directly disconrmed by a concurrent,
vivid experience of contradictory knowledge. In
other words, erasure does not occur simply through
evoking a nonsymptomatic state when normally
the symptom would be occurring (One important
exception to that rule is the learned fear of fear that
often accompanies phobias.). The occurrence of
a symptom does not in itself bring the underlying,
symptom-generating schema into conscious, fore-
ground awareness, as is necessary for guiding the
erasure process in therapy, so methods for evoking
a nonsymptomatic state are not likely to disconrm
the underlying schema. The woman in our exam-
ple might arrive at a session in a depressed mood,
and there are techniques of somatic therapy, posi-
tive psychology, or mindfulness practice that could
be used to shift her into a depression-free sense of
well-being. However, that would not disconrm and
dissolve the underlying implicit schema maintaining
her depression, “I’ll never marry or have children, so
my life as a woman is ruined.” Her depression would
therefore recur.
An example of the misconception that nega-
tive emotion is erased by inducing positive or neu-
tral emotion is the view of Lane et al. (in press)
that “changing emotion with emotion” character-
izes how the system of psychotherapy known as
emotion-focused therapy carries out reconsolida-
tion and erasure. Rather, “changing old model with
new model” is the core phenomenology of erasure
through reconsolidation in any system of thera-
py. Emotions then change as a derivative eect of
change in semantic structures (models, rules, and
attributed meanings), just as in our example the cli-
ent’s depression disappeared as a direct result of
dissolution of her target schema. In therapy, mis-
match consists of, and erasure results from, a direct,
unmistakable perception that reality is fundamen-
tally dierent from what one currently knows and
expects reality to be.
Conclusion
The profound unlearning and cessation of ac-
quired behaviors and states of mind occur through
the process of memory reconsolidation, to the best
of our current scientic knowledge and as exten-
sive clinical experience bears out. However, there
are many possible misconceptions of memory re-
consolidation (see Ecker, 2015 for an extensive re-
view), so I hope this article will help motivate mental
health clinicians to pursue a sound understanding
and thereby gain a vital guide for facilitating lasting,
liberating change with maximum regularity.
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Bruce Ecker, MA, LMFT is co-originator of Coherence
Therapy, co-director of the Coherence Psychology Insti-
tute, and coauthor of Unlocking the Emotional Brain: Elim-
inating Symptoms at Their Roots Using Memory Reconsoli-
dation; the Coherence Therapy Practice Manual and Training
Guide; and Depth Oriented Brief Therapy. He is in private
practice in Oakland, California, gives clinical trainings in-
ternationally, and has taught graduate courses for many
years. Clarifying how lasting, transformational change
takes place is the theme of Bruce Ecker’s clinical career.
He has contributed extensive innovations in concepts and
methods of experiential psychotherapy, and has driven
the clinical eld’s recognition of how memory reconsolida-
tion research translates into new capabilities of consistent
therapeutic eectiveness and psychotherapy integration.
For more information, visit www.CoherenceInstitute.org.
www.neuropsychotherapist.com 23
The Neuropsychotherapist
www.tnptinstitute.com
The Neuropsychotherapy Institute.
The neuropsychotherapy institute learning platform has been created for psychothera-
pists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals, to educate them in the new par-
adigm of neuropsychotherapy for more eective clinical practice.
Neuropsychotherapy is a multidisciplinary perspective on mental well-being that looks
to neuroscience and other related elds of human biology and psychology to enhance the
clinical practice of talking therapies. The Neuropsychotherapy Institute will provide you with
a sound foundational understanding of the neurobiology of mental life and how that knowl-
edge can inform psychotherapy and increase the eectiveness of your practice. The Insti-
tute oers courses on a Continuing Education or Professional Development credit basis* as
each unit keeps you up-to-date with the latest science and practice of psychotherapy.
