Why some memories stick while others fade
Give back to some of your basic memories – watching for a spouse, getting a job you really want or discover someone you like to be dead. Some are quite easy to recall, with lively details which seem as fresh as the moment itself. Other memories may feel more ambiguous and faded, while the most stubborn do not arise at all. Why this gap between memories, good and bad?
A study published today in the journal Scientific advances have found that trivial memories obtain an additional bonding power in the brain if they are connected to an important event. These events include something surprising, gratifying or events with an emotional punch. For example, if you win the lottery, you are more likely to remember what you did just before, even if it is something simple. Or you may remember what you wear or eat for lunch when you received bad news.
Understanding the brain mechanisms behind this could lead to better treatments for those who have memory problems or even be used to help students keep more difficult concepts.
“Memory is not only a passive recording device: our brains decide what matters, and emotional events can reach time to stabilize fragile memories,” the co-author of the study said in a statement, Dr. Robert MG Reinhart, psychologist at the University of Boston. “The development of strategies to strengthen useful memories or weaken harmfuls is a long -standing objective in cognitive neuroscience. Our study suggests that emotional salience could be exploited precisely to achieve these objectives. ”
The selective brain
In the new study, the team used the example of someone who hikes in Yellowstone National Park and seeing a herd of bison walking. They found that the “wow” of this moment not only cemented this magical experience in the mind, but several small more banal events leading to this and outside. Things like a rock that was on the way or a smaller animal in the grass.
“The question is:” What are the mechanisms for this? “” Said Reinhart. “This is what we tried to discover how the brain selectively strengthens these fragile memories.”
Different types of memories are stored in the regions of the interconnected brain. Explicit memories are those who have happened to you who have happened to you and the facts and general information. The hippocampus, the neocortex and the amygdal all work to keep these episodic memories stored. Implicit memories (such as our motor functions) are stored in central gray nuclei and the cerebellum. Short -term work memories mainly involve the prefrontal cortex.
The great special moments of our life get a main place throughout the brain memory storage system. However, scientists were more divided on concepts called improvement in retroactive and proactive memory. This concept covers how memories are priority immediately after an important or salient event. Previous studies disagree on the fact that lower memories are or not stabilized or that it is easier to recall, by their attachment to a greater memory.
A pop memory quiz
To show that improving memory occurs in the brain, this study included nearly 650 participants, 10 individual studies and artificial intelligence to analyze a wider set of data. According to Reinhart, a major difference with previous studies is that it has discovered that the brain uses a sliding scale to decide on the memories to be preserved.
Several experiences involved showing the participants of the dozens of images that were connected at different reward levels, then giving them a pop memory quiz the next day. With things that happened after an event (or proactive memories), the strength of the recall seemed to depend on the emotional impact of the great moment itself. The more sustainable this big event, the more likely everything is likely After We will remember him.
This same storage was not applied when you return to the memory bank to things that have occurred in the round of the race or retroactive memories. These were more likely to be cemented if they had similarities (a kind of visual benchmark, like a matching color) which connected them to the pivot event.
Reinhart says that this provides the first validation in humans of “graduated prioritization, a new principle of the way in which the brain consolidates daily experiences”.
The co-author of the study and doctoral student Chenyang (Leo) Lin added: “For the first time, we show clear evidence that the brain saves weak memories in a conventional way, guided by their high-level similarity with emotional events.
The team also found that if secondary memories themselves brought an emotional weight, the effect of improving memory was reduced. It seems that the brain gives priority to the fragile moments that otherwise disappear, according to the team.
Memory rescue and more
Although this last study has focused on the discovery of basic mechanisms that guide how memories are coded, this research could lay the foundations for future studies and clinical interventions and other real world.
“Discovery has major implications for theory and practice,” said Reinhart. “In education, associating emotionally engaging material with fragile concepts could improve retention. In a clinical setting, we could potentially save weak memories, back in the corners of our mind because of normal aging, for example. You can also turn it over for weakening people. ”
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