This text is part of the special section Acfas prices
The Dr Alain Brunet, winner of the Acfas Léo-Pariseau prize for biological sciences and health sciences, helps people with post-traumatic stress disorder overcome their emotional wounds
Alain Brunet developed memory reconsolidation therapy, which combines light psychotherapy with taking propranolol, a medication that blocks the action of certain neurotransmitters. Taking this pharmaceutical agent is first combined with a memory reactivation protocol. Then, the patients write a short text in which they recount the event that traumatized them. They then reread this text aloud during six weekly sessions.
The molecules released by propranolol reduce the emotional charge of the memory when the brain re-records it while reading the text. It is therefore not a question of erasing the memory, as in the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but to make it less painful. After four to six sessions, approximately 70% of treated patients see a very marked improvement in their symptoms.
“Each time we recall a memory, the brain must re-record it; it’s not like looking at a photograph,” explains Alain Brunet. We can therefore act on the emotional charge of the memory at the time of this re-recording. »
30 years of research
The road to this new therapy has been long and arduous. The most cited article in the Dr Brunet, written in 2005, was only finally published in 2008 in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, after being rejected by a dozen scientific journals. “The skepticism of my colleagues represented my biggest challenge,” he admits.
It must be said that post-traumatic stress disorder only entered the pages of the MDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the definitive reference work of the American Psychiatric Association. Despite this, it remained little known and often considered a rare illness suffered mainly by soldiers returning from war.
Barely nine years later, Alain Brunet began his master’s studies in psychology at the University of Montreal. It was then that the massacre occurred at the École Polytechnique, which shook this establishment and all of Quebec. The Department of Psychology found itself on the front lines trying to help University students and staff overcome this trauma, but its members had few tools and expertise to do so.
“I was struck by the extent to which the lack of knowledge about this problem forced those involved to improvise, and this made me want to find a better approach,” he says.
A free lunch, which will become chargeable
In the 1990s, Alain Brunet wrote a doctoral thesis on the trauma experienced by Montreal bus drivers, then left to study at the University of California in San Francisco.
“For someone who works in my field, it’s a bit like being drafted by the Montreal Canadiens,” he explains. He owes this incredible luck to the support of the DD Louise Gaston, founder of the Traumatys clinic. During his three years on the American west coast, he attended a conference that would change the course of his professional life.
It was in fact during this meeting that he discovered the effect of propranolol in interventions on memories. “Ironically, I mainly went there for the free food, which is never a bad thing for a student!” » he notes. Initially, his first idea was to quickly give this drug to emergency patients who had suffered trauma, in order to reduce the emotional burden of this memory. But this poses several problems: some arrive at the emergency room too late for it to be effective, while many others do not go to the hospital; we treat everyone, including people who would never have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, etc.
Through research and experiments, he will instead develop his current approach to memory reconsolidation therapy. This will be particularly talked about in France in the wake of the Paris attacks in November 2015. Alain Brunet then trained 160 doctors in around twenty Parisian hospitals so that they could apply his method to hundreds of people traumatized by these attacks.
“I am delighted to receive this prize from Acfas, because it will help to raise awareness of this therapy,” said Alain Brunet. For the moment, several professionals have been trained in Quebec and France to administer it, and a small number also in English Canada and the United States.
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