Brain Study Suggests Traumatic Memories Are Processed as Present Experience (nytimes.com) 10
Traumatic memories had their own neural mechanism, brain scans showed, which may help explain their vivid and intrusive nature. From a report: At the root of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a memory that cannot be controlled. It may intrude on everyday activity, thrusting a person into the middle of a horrifying event, or surface as night terrors or flashbacks. Decades of treatment of military veterans and sexual assault survivors have left little doubt that traumatic memories function differently from other memories. A group of researchers at Yale University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai set out to find empirical evidence of those differences.
The team conducted brain scans of 28 people with PTSD while they listened to recorded narrations of their own memories. Some of the recorded memories were neutral, some were simply "sad," and some were traumatic. The brain scans found clear differences, the researchers reported in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Nature Neuroscience. The people listening to the sad memories, which often involved the death of a family member, showed consistently high engagement of the hippocampus, part of the brain that organizes and contextualizes memories. When the same people listened to their traumatic memories -- of sexual assaults, fires, school shootings and terrorist attacks -- the hippocampus was not involved.
[...] Indeed, the authors conclude in the paper, "traumatic memories are not experienced as memories as such," but as "fragments of prior events, subjugating the present moment." The traumatic memories appeared to engage a different area of the brain -- the posterior cingulate cortex, or P.C.C., which is usually involved in internally directed thought, like introspection or daydreaming. The more severe the person's PTSD symptoms were, the more activity appeared in the P.C.C. What is striking about this finding is that the P.C.C. is not known as a memory region, but one that is engaged with "processing of internal experience," Dr. Schiller said.
The team conducted brain scans of 28 people with PTSD while they listened to recorded narrations of their own memories. Some of the recorded memories were neutral, some were simply "sad," and some were traumatic. The brain scans found clear differences, the researchers reported in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Nature Neuroscience. The people listening to the sad memories, which often involved the death of a family member, showed consistently high engagement of the hippocampus, part of the brain that organizes and contextualizes memories. When the same people listened to their traumatic memories -- of sexual assaults, fires, school shootings and terrorist attacks -- the hippocampus was not involved.
[...] Indeed, the authors conclude in the paper, "traumatic memories are not experienced as memories as such," but as "fragments of prior events, subjugating the present moment." The traumatic memories appeared to engage a different area of the brain -- the posterior cingulate cortex, or P.C.C., which is usually involved in internally directed thought, like introspection or daydreaming. The more severe the person's PTSD symptoms were, the more activity appeared in the P.C.C. What is striking about this finding is that the P.C.C. is not known as a memory region, but one that is engaged with "processing of internal experience," Dr. Schiller said.
Yes (Score:2)
Psilocybin (Score:2)
OK that's really interesting. Is it possible this is why the talk therapy component along with psilocybin works? I've read they need to try to do certain types of therapies to prevent PTSD within 24 hours or something along those lines... Or is that an oversimplification?
Re: (Score:2)
Only traumatic memories? (Score:2)
I wonder if it is a specific pathway for traumatic (bad) memories or just overwhelming (good or bad) memories in general.
There is a negativity bias, so bad memories tend to be stronger than good ones, but I wonder if the same effect can be achieved with memories of life changing events that are neutral to good.
Alternatively, "good trips" from psychedelic drugs. These can be really strong and even life changing. I mention these drugs because flashbacks following "bad trips" have a lot in common with PTSD, so
Re: (Score:1)
You mean Total Recall, Universal Solider.. (Score:2)
.. they all got it right.
What's novel about Salience? (Score:3)
Both in psychology and neurology/neuroanatomy, salience is described as extent to which of a perceived stimulus can be recalled or even relived. Traumatic events are traumatic in that they are extremely salient and presumably unwanted. Simply attempting to remember them isn't mere recollection, but instead a reliving of the event resulting in biochemical changes in one's body.
The body's biochemical response to salient stimulus can manifest in a variety of different ways; Hints of a perfume causing immediate tears to fall because of the scent being tied to memories of a lost loved one, a song that was playing when something horrible was happening immediately putting someone into a funk, and the commonly described 4th of July fireworks transporting a combat veteran back to the battlefield.
"It's like it's happening to me right now" is a common phrase of someone recalling a salient experience.
Can we stop (Score:2)
Shilling for the NYT?
There is no way to read the article without paying the NYT
No Shit (Score:2)
"Remembering" vs. "Reliving" (Score:5, Interesting)
The difference between remembering a memory and reliving that situation is well known in psychotherapy, and is one of the key aspects of CBT (Cognitive Behavorial Therapy). Quite often, a situation that is objectively not traumatic can be experienced as highly traumatic, having the exact same effect on the person experiencing it as someone experiencing an objectively traumatic event.
An important effect is that reliving lays down ANOTHER memory of having gone through the incident, reinforcing all that came before. This action prevents such reliving from fading with time like normal memories, but instead can become worse over time and the reinforcement grows.
It is good that the difference between reliving and remembering has been observed in brain studies, but that does not inform the relevant treatment.
In my case, I had to learn a few objective things about such experiences:
1. Though they felt like they were occurring again, THEY WERE NOT! The notion of "grounding" was important in separating reliving from reality.
2. The physiological reactions (nightmares, pulse rise, sweating, rapid breathing, adrenaline bursts, etc.) must be nipped in the bud by "talking back to them", by literally saying to oneself that these reactions have NO PLACE in the present.
3. Acceptance. Accept that these things live in the mind, and work is underway to deal with them. This is the opposite of fearing the memory, and is the most important step to erasing its power.
I used to have terrifying nightmares of such experiences. Just weeks into learning CBT I had the tools needed to dissolve them away, clearing the field for the more difficult work that was to follow to learn why my brain did these things to me and to get it to stop doing that kind of stuff. I still remember them all, but I'm no longer reliving them, and I see them for what they actually were back then.