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HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Cognit.
Sec. Memory
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcogn.2025.1518743
This article is part of the Research Topic The Arts Therapies and Neuroscience View all 19 articles
Memory Reconsolidation: A Proposed Change Mechanism for the Arts Therapies
Provisionally accepted- 1 California School of Professional Psychology, Alliant International University-San Diego, San Diego, United States
- 2 Dominican University of California, San Rafael, California, United States
There is a continued need for the development of the arts therapies' theoretical foundations. The development of the principles of art therapy relational neuroscience (ATR-N) has advanced this agenda yet the examination of the specifics of neuroscience-based change mechanisms continues to be an imminent task. It is proposed that memory reconsolidation (MR) processes are a common therapeutic change mechanism for arts therapies, and arts therapies processes and procedures uniquely facilitate autobiographical MR. The aims of this theoretical publication are to explain what memory reconsolidation is, describe the necessary conditions for therapeutic MR to occur from a neuroscience perspective, highlight how the arts therapies practices innately meet MR conditions, and review an illustrative arts therapies case example.
Keywords: Art Therapy, expressive arts, neuroaesthetics, ATR-N, memory reconsolidation, common therapeutic factor, relational neuroscience, Truama
Received: 02 Dec 2024; Accepted: 29 Jan 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hass-Cohen and Clay. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Noah Hass-Cohen, California School of Professional Psychology, Alliant International University-San Diego, San Diego, United States
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