Lewy body dementia (LBD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder after Alzheimer's disease. Cognitive fluctuations, visual hallucinations, parkinsonian signs, and rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD) are diagnostic criteria. However, the diverse clinical presentations complicate diagnosis and management, as the disease may begin with psychiatric symptoms, confusion, sleep disturbances, and/or autonomic dysfunction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe prospect of exploiting memory reconsolidation to treat mental health disorders has received great research interest, particularly following demonstrations that the β-adrenergic receptor antagonist propranolol, which is safe for use in humans, can disrupt the reconsolidation of pavlovian conditioned fear memories. However, recent studies have failed to replicate the effects of propranolol on fear memory reconsolidation, and have questioned whether treatments based upon reconsolidation blockade would be robust enough for clinical translation. It remains possible, though, that studies reporting no effect of propranolol on memory reconsolidation could be due to a failure to engage the memory destabilisation process, which is necessary for the memory to become susceptible to disruption with amnestic agents.
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