Saturday, January 20, 2007
The Flavor Of Memories
Two crucial facts that neurologists have come to understand in the past few years about the workings of human memory--facts that have important implications for the treatment of a variety of mental disorders, from post-traumatic stress to obsessive-compulsive disorder. The first is that, despite its movie-like clarity, my memory of J.F.K.’s assassination is almost certainly wrong in some details, and maybe even some significant ones. That’s because I’m not simply calling up the original memory laid down in November 1963. I’m recalling the last time I thought about it. Each time we retrieve and re-store a memory, it can be subtly altered by all sorts of factors. What goes back into our brains is like the new version of a text document, overwriting the old. The second fact: memory and emotion are intimately linked biochemically, with hormones like adrenaline actively involved in forming the neurological patterns we call memories.
9/11 • Amygdala • Anger • Anxiety • Autonomic Nervous System • Brain • Cognition • Emotions • Hormones • Memory • Mood • Panic • Psychology • PTSD • Stress • (0) Comments • Permalink