allowed to follow visual, auditory or printed stories such as the TV news, soap operas or TV
series requiring remembering of many new facts, names and interpersonal relations. Seda-
tives may have positive effect on the memory overload because in the absence of strong
emotions the limbic neuromodulatory systems does not increase synaptic plasticity, prevent-
ing formation of new memories.
• Strengthen the old, well-established memory patterns.
A significant portion of time should be spent on recalling the stories and facts of pa-
tient’s life, perhaps with the help of family members. These memories form a skeleton of
the concept of ‘self’. Antonio Damasio [5] expressed it this way: “... the endless reactivation
of updated images about our identity (a combination of the memories past and planned fu-
ture) constitutes a sizable part of the state of self as I understand it”. These memories are
probably based on strong synaptic connections between cortical columns, with little in-
volvement from limbic inputs required by more recent memories (cf. Murre [16],[17]).
Strengthening old memory patterns related to one’s self is very much in line with the “Self-
Maintenance-Therapy” (Selbst-Erhaltungs-Therapie) proposed by Romero [20] on quite
different theoretical grounds and used in treatment of the early stages of Alzheimer’s dis-
ease. In this therapy patients are required to tell stories recalling various events of their life
as means to strengthen their self.
Compensation effects should selectively reinforce strong synaptic connections. This
may be achieved through a combination of Self-Maintenance-Therapy (perhaps including
family members) with drugs that allow for a short period of emotional arousal increasing
synaptic plasticity.
• Simplify the brain dynamics to avoid memory interference.
Formation of new memory patterns or activation of existing memories requires repeti-
tive high-frequency reverberations in the neocortex. For example, hearing and recognizing a
real word leads to a noticeable rise in the EEG frequency, in comparison to a pseudoword,
i.e. a meaningless combination of phonemes [19]. Integrated electrical activity of cortical
columns gives a measure of the overall activity of the brain. The power spectrum obtained
from the multi-electrode EEG measurements should allow, in the limit of a large number of
electrodes, to evaluate this energy. In analogy to thermodynamics of systems far from ther-
mal equlibrium one could thus define the “brain temperature” and think about the synaptic
runaway processes as overheating the system.
‘Cooling the brain’, or reducing the average brain temperature, should decrease the
synaptic runaway and synaptic deletion processes. It may be achieved with the help of bio-
feedback, yoga meditation or other deep relaxation techniques. In particular the alpha-