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by Project Willow » Mon Dec 23, 2013 3:30 pm
by operator kos » Mon Dec 23, 2013 7:49 pm
Researchers use electroconvulsive therapy to disrupt recall of specific events.
In the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, unhappy lovers undergo an experimental brain treatment to erase all memories of each other from their minds. No such fix exists for real-life couples, but researchers report today in Nature Neuroscience that a targeted medical intervention helps to reduce specific negative memories in patients who are depressed.
"This is one time I would say that science is better than art," says Karim Nader, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who was not involved in the research. "It's a very clever study."
The technique, called electroconvulsive (ECT) or electroshock therapy, induces seizures by passing current into the brain through electrode pads placed on the scalp. Despite its sometimes negative reputation, ECT is an effective last-resort treatment for severe depression, and is used today in combination with anaesthesia and muscle relaxants.
Marijn Kroes, a neuroscientist at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and his colleagues found that by strategically timing ECT bursts, they could target and disrupt patients' memory of a disturbing episode.
A matter of time
The strategy relies on a theory called memory reconsolidation, which proposes that memories are taken out of 'mental storage' each time they are accessed and 're-written' over time back onto the brain's circuits. Results from animal studies and limited evidence in humans suggest that during reconsolidation, memories are vulnerable to alteration or even erasure2–4.
Kroes and his team tested this idea in 42 patients who had been prescribed ECT for severe clinical depression. In an initial session, the researchers showed two disturbing slide-show narratives: one depicting a car accident, and the other a physical assault.
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The team later prompted patients to recall only one of the stories by replaying part of that slide show. Immediately afterwards, when the reactivated memory is thought to be vulnerable, the patients received electroconvulsive therapy.
One day later, when given a multiple-choice memory test, patients were significantly worse at remembering details from the reactivated story, performing near chance. Patients' memory of the other story, however, remained largely unscathed. But when researchers administered the memory test 90 minutes after treatment, patients showed no differences in their ability to recall the two stories. This suggests that the therapy blocked the time-dependent process of reconsolidation, rather than causing sudden memory loss.
"This provides very strong and compelling evidence that memories in the human brain undergo reconsolidation, and that a window of opportunity exists to treat bad memories," says Daniela Schiller, a neuroscientist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York who also studies memory reconsolidation.
Thinking ahead
Schiller says more work is needed to establish how long the ECT effects last, and whether the technique works as effectively on older or more complex memories from real-life experiences, says Schiller.
Kroes adds that ECT may not be the best option for most patients, but says that these results could guide the development of less invasive interventions that target memory reconsolidation5. Eventually, he says, the idea could be extended to memories involved in post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
"The ability to permanently alter these types of memories might lead to novel, better treatments," says Kroes.
by cptmarginal » Tue Dec 31, 2013 11:36 am
Cheryl's publisher is releasing a new edition of the book next year.
by cptmarginal » Tue Dec 31, 2013 11:52 am
by Project Willow » Tue Dec 31, 2013 1:44 pm
cptmarginal » 31 Dec 2013 07:36 wrote:Cheryl's publisher is releasing a new edition of the book next year.
That's good news... Seeing as how the original kidnapping of the Hersha sisters apparently happened in Michigan - and the two co-authors/investigators of their account are from Ohio - I again wonder if there is some experimental or institutional aspect to the supposed Toledo Satanic cult of killer priest Gerald Robinson.
I was privileged to join my voice recently with four other brave women from the community where I was born and raised. On Tuesday May 11, 2004 I made a Jane Doe statement to the police in my hometown of Toledo, Ohio.
I believe some of you are familiar with the murder trial that will start in October for Rev. Gerald Robinson accused of ritually murdering an elderly nun on a hospital altar 24 years ago. She had been strangled and repeatedly stabbed and her body posed to look like she was sexually assaulted.
After Father Robinsons’ arrest deeper issues began to surface over accusations of sexual abuse of children in churches and schools by priests and lay members. Four women told detectives about being abused between the late 1960s and 1986 during cult-like ceremonies involving altars and men dressed in robes.
When interviewed by the Toledo Blade one woman said, “I’ve had nightmares about this since I was a child, I didn’t think anyone would believe me.”
For those of us who have been ritually abused this statement says it all, doesn’t it? Who wants to hear or believe the horrors that we lived through? Who can believe that humans are capable of such heinous acts? Even some therapists would rather believe that dolls were actually what we remember being murdered. Just too hard to believe babies were sacrificed.
One of the victims who came forward in the Father Robinson case spoke of ritualistic sexual abuse beginning during her preschool years, by a group of priests who gathered in church basements and rectories in “cult-like ceremonies” where children were molested and ordered to watch other youngsters being abused.
In my statement to police I joined my voice with theirs by reporting not only my own ritual abuse by a priest at the Catholic Church I attended in the 50′s, but rituals that occurred in other places in and around the community.
Considering the fact that my perpetrators were deceased I hoped the police would take my testimony seriously since I was not looking for personal vindication in any of these matters.
As I told the police, my desire was to present the facts as I remembered them, in the event that they would fit into a larger picture that I was not aware of.
Was I validated by all of this coming out into the open? Yes most assuredly, but I wish I could say I was never able to be validated in such a way. My heart bled for these women. I wanted it to not be true. I wanted to be the only one, even though I remembered plenty of other children during the rituals I was subjected to.
You and I know that Toledo, Ohio is not the only place this has happened. It has and is still happening across the length and breadth of this land, this continent and every other continent of the world. Find your voice, won’t you? You can make a difference.
By the way, speaking of my home town, within the last week a newspaper investigation by the Toledo Blade revealed that law enforcement abetted the Catholic diocese repeatedly in covering up sexual abuse by priests as far back as 1958. That’s Fifty years of the police knowing about cases of priests molesting children and turning a blind eye to it.
According to the Blade, rather than prosecuting criminal acts by priests, police and other civil authorities quietly and systematically shuffled aside cases of abuse, leaving them to be dealt with by the church. Four former officers told The Blade that there was an unwritten order by then-Chief Anthony Bosch, a devout Catholic, not to arrest priests. Chief Bosch oddly enough was given a new Cadillac by a Catholic fraternal organization.
These revelations followed a 2002 Blade investigation that showed the diocese covered up the crimes of pedophile priests for decades, moving some from parish to parish without informing members of either church. Perhaps this will be the next big scandal across the country, finding quiet complicity by law enforcement in other cities?
cptmarginal » 31 Dec 2013 07:36 wrote:Speaking of those two co-authors, there's something I have to say that shouldn't be interpreted as harsh criticism but rather as just more speculation. Basically: they remind me of Mark Phillips, for various reasons. Partially because the extra-lurid and action-packed story recounted in "Secret Weapons" reminds me of "Trance Formation of America," a book which I think also has some very real and tragic events at its core.
by cptmarginal » Tue Dec 31, 2013 3:11 pm
The pulp style of the writing is definitely a detractor. I don't know who, among the authors, is responsible for it. I haven't investigated either Griffis or Schwarz, but you can find extremely negative commentary on the Internet about anyone who has ever advocated for RA survivors in the past.
Carol, the Hersha sisters, and I all lived in Michigan at various times, as children.
An attorney for a Toledo woman who claims she was sexually and ritually abused as a child by members of a satanic cult - including Gerald Robinson, the Toledo priest convicted of murdering a nun - is asking the Ohio 6th District Court of Appeals to reinstate her case a second time.
Attorney Mark Davis, representing the woman suing anonymously as Survivor Doe, claims that Judge Ruth Ann Franks of Lucas County Common Pleas Court misinterpreted Ohio's statute of limitations laws.
He also asserts that the judge unfairly denied him access to diocesan files and witnesses needed to prove his case, while granting attorneys for Robinson and the diocese "exhaustive and unlimited" access to Survivor Doe's "entire life, searching through every medical record, every school record, and every page of her personal journal" and allowing them to interview "as many witnesses as they wanted."
Attorneys for the diocese argued that the statutes of limitations had expired long before Survivor Doe filed her suit in 2005.
Mr. Davis also claims that another defendant, Gerald Mazuchowski of Toledo, blackmailed the diocese into keeping the satanic cult secret. It said Mr. Mazuchowski founded a "cult" called Sisters of Assumed Mary in which men dressed as nuns, used fake names such as "Mary Jerry" and "Carrie Jerry," and abused Survivor Doe and others in satanic rituals.
The suit alleges that Mr. Mazuchowski went before the
Toledo diocese's Court of Equity and "made some statements that shook them to their very foundations," after which church officials "buried the Sisters of Assumed Mary in the secret files to protect the priests who were homosexuals."
Tom Pletz, an attorney representing the diocese, said yesterday he had not received a copy of the appeal and could not comment on the filing. He did say that the diocese provided more than 300 pages of documents to Mr. Davis. He also cited an opinion by Judge Franks that focused discovery requests in the case to information related to statutes of limitations.
Mr. Mazuchowski, 58, yesterday denied all of Survivor Doe's allegations and said Mr. Davis "is determined to make something out of nothing."
He said the Sisters of Assumed Mary was nothing but an informal, harmless organization - "just a group of friends who were into nuns and their culture" - that never abused anyone.
He said he does not know who Survivor Doe is because of her protected identity "although she said she sees me everywhere, including driving by her house - and I don't even have a car."
The appeal filed yesterday gives grisly details of abuses alleged to have occurred starting in 1968.
It said Survivor Doe, now in her mid-40s, was sexually abused as a child by a brother, an uncle, and male and female friends of her mother, and that her mother "gave Doe to the satanic cult to abuse."
The suit said the cult "raped" the child with a snake, made her drink blood, and forced her to watch animals being beheaded.
It said the abuse by Robinson "caused the worst psychological wounds" because of "his primary relationship to God."
In Survivor Doe's initial suit, filed in Lucas County Common Pleas Court in April, 2005, she claimed that she had not known the identity of the abusers because they wore nun disguises and used fake names, and that she had repressed many memories because they were so painful.
She said she began recalling bits and pieces of the abuse during 15 years of therapy, and was prescribed Vicodin to ease the physical pain associated with recalling the memories.
Survivor Doe said that when she saw Gerald Robinson on television after his arrest for murder in April, 2004, "that put all the pieces together." She also said she recognized Mr. Mazuchowski after seeing his photo in The Blade.
The suit was dismissed by Judge Ruth Ann Franks in January, 2007, on statutes of limitations grounds. Survivor Doe then petitioned the Ohio 6th District Court of Appeals, which sent her case back to common pleas court in October, 2007.
Judge Franks dismissed the suit a second time on Jan. 12, going into greater detail on statutes of limitations and saying that Ohio law required Survivor Doe to have used "reasonable diligence" to try to identify her abusers before the statutes expired.
Mr. Davis said in yesterday's appeal that Survivor Doe tried as best she could, but was limited because of her partial memories and because she was "scared to death" of the perpetrators, who threatened to kill her if she talked.
The suit was filed within a year after Survivor Doe claims to have recognized Robinson as her abuser, which is the moment the statutes of limitations should have begun ticking, according to Mr. Davis.
Robinson, 71, was convicted by a Lucas County Common Pleas Court jury in May, 2006, in the 1980 murder of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl. He is serving a 15-years-to-life prison sentence. He remains a Catholic priest although he retired in 2005 and has been barred from ministry.
Nearly seven years after he went to prison for the 1980 murder of a nun, Gerald Robinson’s fight to have his conviction overturned continues to move through the courts.
In the latest ruling, the Ohio 6th District Court of Appeals rejected the Toledo priest’s claims that prosecutors withheld key documents from his defense attorneys and that his defense attorneys failed to focus on a known serial killer as the more likely suspect in the death of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl. The court affirmed the April, 2011, finding of Lucas County Common Pleas Judge Gene Zmuda, who denied Robinson’s petition for postconviction relief.
Richard Kerger, attorney for Robinson, said Wednesday that the fight for a new trial will not end with this decision.
“We will be appealing the decision to the Ohio Supreme Court and doing so in the next week or two,” he said.
Once the state appeals are exhausted, he said, the case could move to U.S. District Court on postconviction-relief claims.
In his appeal, Mr. Kerger contended Robinson’s trial attorneys failed to pursue serial killer Coral Eugene Watts as an obvious suspect in Sister Margaret Ann’s murder and said the state withheld key documents from the defense, including 139 pages of documents misfiled by Toledo police.
“We have reviewed the previously undisclosed documents and reviewed again the entire trial transcript and evidence,” the appeals court wrote. “After such review, we cannot say that the undisclosed evidence was material in the sense that the outcome of the trial would have been different.”
Similarly, the appeals court said trial attorneys had not erred in failing to focus on Watts — who had strangled and stabbed women similar to the way in which Sister Margaret Ann was killed — as a more likely suspect in the killing.
“Reviewing the trial transcript and evidence admitted at trial, as well as the discovery documents pertaining to Watts, we cannot say the trial counsel was ineffective in failing to specifically pursue the theory that Coral Watts was the murderer,” the appeals court wrote. “The strategy of focusing on the alleged shoddy 1980 investigation while implying that Father [Jerome] Swiatecki or an unknown individual committed the murder was sound.”
Sister Margaret Ann, who was a day short of 72 when she was killed, was choked to the edge of death, then stabbed 32 times in the chest, neck, and face in the sacristy of the former Mercy Hospital. Robinson, now 74, was convicted of her murder by a jury in May, 2006, and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
J. Christopher Anderson, an assistant Lucas County prosecutor, said the appellate decision was expected.
“We anticipated that would be the outcome on it,” he said. “Coral Watts was a red herring.”
He said investigators looked at Watts at the time of Sister Margaret Ann’s murder and didn’t find any evidence to connect him to the slaying.
Mr. Anderson said prosecutors are convinced the right man is in prison. “We stick by the verdict,” he said.
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