Learn a bit about #memory retrieval and how the #brain hides our cherished treasures - http://clapway.com/2015/08/19/your-brain-hides-memories-but-you-can-restore-them-342/

While we all have memories, some of those memories, especially ones that are particularly traumatic, are hidden from us by our own brains. In a way, this protective mechanism of being unable to recall stressful memories prevents us from experiencing the emotional pain associated with the memory. But what if we need to face them? How can we get these memories back?

A new study published in Nature Neuroscience has explained the process of state-dependent learning and how it affects our memories — or lack thereof — thanks to our brain’s protective instincts.

Memories Formed In Particular States Can Only Be Accessed In A Similar State

Our brains may hide our emotionally painful memories, but the repression of these memories can manifest themselves as mood disorders, including anxiety, depression, and PTSD.

What happens when we have a traumatic experience is that our brains are still recording, but they are within a specific type of recording category known as state-dependent learning. The study researchers have found that those memories that are formed within a specific state of mind (be it fear-induced or drug-induced) are best retrieved when the brain has returned to that similar state.

Key author of the study Jelena Radulovic of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine explains that this important finding may lead to better treatments for patients suffering psychiatric disorders who need to face their traumatic memories in order to recover.

So how are memories formed? If you can’t remember, read this!

Meet The Neurotransmitters that aid your Memories

There are two main amino acids in your brain that are the neurotransmitters that control your nerves. Meet glutamate and GABA receptors!

Glutamate stimulates your nerves, while GABA calms them. They act as opposing forces to help balance your brain function: one excites your nerves when the time is right, the other inhibits them when you need to chill. But in certain overstimulating situations, our glutamate spikes, which wouldn’t be a terrible problem except it’s also the main chemical needed to store memories for easy retrieval.

Now, GABA is interesting because there are two kinds of GABA receptors. The first is the balancing receptor to glutamate, while the other has a different role. These extra-synaptic GABA, as they are known, primarily focus on adjusting mental states and brain waves in response to internal body chemicals.

Do you remember when we said sleep is the key?

Extra-synaptic GABA are at play when we are tired or are waking up or are under the influence of drugs or alcohol. But they are also hard at work when a fear-inducing state is occurring and we are using out glutamate to respond to the event. During this fear state, our extra-synaptic GABA store our memories deep within our subconscious.

The researchers in the study likened this to tuning the radio from AM to FM frequency, where we regularly access FM, but the station we need is on AM. We can’t get to the channel we need if we stay on the FM frequency, so we must switch to AM.

Likewise, if our GABA receptors store the traumatic memory, in order to get it back, we must activate them again.

But can we restore memories with light? This article says “perhaps”…

The Study That Used Inebriated States To Restore Memories

The study researchers came across their findings after taking lab mice and getting them inebriated. No, not with alcohol, but with a drug called gaboxadol, which stimulates the extra-synaptic GABA receptors in their brains.

While inebriated, the researchers moved the mice to a box, gave a short electric shock, and repeated the assignment the next day but without injecting the mice. Strangely, the mice showed no fear of the box. However, when they gave another shot of gaboxadol to the rodents and placed them in the cage, they stood anxiously awaiting another shock. They had remembered.

Under the same drug-induced brain state, the mices’ memories of the traumatic event came flooding back because the extra-synaptic GABA receptors were activated. They had tuned into the AM frequency and the channel was playing loud and clear.

What does this mean for humans? Well, it may mean that a different system for regulating, storing, and accessing memories has been found that can prove useful in therapies for mood disorders. Our memories are all there, we just have to learn on which channel they are playing to hear them.

Title Picture Credit to 55Laney69
Additional Image Credits to Sara and |vv@ldzen|

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From the beginning of Moleskine, they’ve been recording our memories like no other…

 

Your Brain Hides Memories, But You Can Restore Them

Need to Remember Something? Go to Sleep - http://clapway.com/2015/07/27/need-to-remember-something-go-to-sleep-343/

If you want another reason to hit the snooze button and sleep in some more, a new study has show that sleeping helps us recall facts that we previously had forgotten. So curl up in those blankets for a little longer today for the sake of your memory.

Improve Your Memory Recall Using Sleep As a Learning Tool

The new research from the University of Exeter in conjunction with the Basque Center for Cognition, Brain and Language suggested that getting more sleep may increase your ability to access memories.

According to the researchers, the findings showed that sleeping may help prevent memory as well as make it easier for people to recall memories previously thought to have been forgotten. In both situations investigated in the study, participants who had forgotten information over 12 hours of being awake had been granted access to the memories after a night’s rest.

The study was published in the journal Cortex and focused on tracking memories and recalling learned information after waking.

Study Says Sleep Linked to Recalling Information

The study involved having participants learn new, fictitious words either before going to sleep or after a period of being awake. Then the subjects had to recall the fake words immediately after learning them as well as after a period of wakefulness if they learned before sleeping or a period of sleep if they learned in the opposite manner.

Researchers in the study noticed the subjects who were able to recall the words after having previously been unable to recall the words had been the ones who had slept in between learning, testing and retesting.

Nicolas Dumay, an experimental psychologist at Exeter said that the post-sleep memory boost seen in the study is in indication that sleep may help sharpen memories, providing better memory accessibility.

Dumay also cited the hippocampus, the brain structure related to emotions and memory as well as learning, as the main enabler that allows sleep to nearly double our chances of recalling memories.

More Sleep Study Needed to Help Boost Understanding

Researchers believe that sleep, in some way, helps us “rehearse” information learned over the course of the day, as long as it is deemed important.

Though the benefits of sleep on our memories has been known for some time, there needs to be more research to fully understand the vital importance sleep plays in memory accessibility, memory recall, and memory retention.

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Need to Remember Something? Go to Sleep

How Memories Form- Breakthrough Study on Emotion and Neurological Association - http://clapway.com/2015/07/04/how-memories-form-breakthrough-study-on-emotion-and-neurological-association456/

Ever wonder what would happen if you ran into your first lost love on the train station? Imagine the sheer simultaneity of trauma and bliss forever etching that person, that place, and that day into your mind, like nonconsensual neurological programming. Ever wondered how memories form?

PERHAPS THE BRAIN’S TO BLAME

Neurologists have just gained the ability to observe a specific kind of physical link being created in the human brain. The study detailing recent research was published on Wednesday, in the journal Neuron. It happens when a subject’s (i.e. a Human’s) behavior alters by associating a particular person with a singular place. Itzhak Fried, one of the authors of the paper and also head of the Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory at UCLA, says that “this type of study helps us understand the neural code that serves memory,” and be key to understanding how memories form.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND SENTIMENTALITY

Cognitive psychology and neuroscience have made impressive progress in the study of patients suffering from diseases following accidents or disorders of the brain, but the precise mechanism behind these phenomena has eluded us until now.

This research is supplement to a broader topic of study which began ten years ago. Originally, scientists were inspired by neurons in the medial temporal lobe which seem to have evolved to respond only to a particular person, or a specific place, N.B., many patients tested positive for a real, singular neuron which exists specifically to respond to an images of Jennifer Aniston and Lisa Kudrow of the TV show Friends. Scientists think that since the two actresses spent a good deal of time on screen together, it makes sense for the brain to create a link betwixt them.

THE PROCEDURE- how memories form by association

The scientists first step was to identify neurons responding to a specific face, e.g. Clint Eastwood, then scientists identified neurons responding to pictures of a particular place, for instance the Eiffel Tower or the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The fascinating part was to induce this process artificially; to cause the brain to form a new neurological association betwixt person and place. And, when stimulated with such imagery, the neurons in the medial temporal lobe changed their behavior.

“When the association is created, suddenly the cell very rapidly changes its firing properties, says Fried. To note, a cell in the brain ordinarily responding only to imagery of Clint Eastwood responded similarly to imagery of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS

Such neurological behavior could lend explanatory power to how the brain creates memories of experiences in general, which, in addition to persons and specific places, may also involve emotions, tactile sensations, and a plenum of other information, added Fried. These specially designed neurons may function to assist in the re-assembly of all relevant information, to form a unitary simulation in the mind.

BROADER APPLICATIONS

In addition, this study may also explain what occurs in the medial temporal lobe of those whom have trouble forming new memories, where in the case of “Alzheimer’s, one of the very first changes you see is in this very area…I have to create an association between my car and the particular place…If an association is not created, then I will not be able to find my car.”

This study also lends credence to the notion that memories can be formed quite rapidly, noted Michael J. Kahana, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania (not directly involved in the study). This study will doubtlessly assist scientists pursuing the neurological cause(s) of memory impairment and identity loss, and be instrumental in finding out how memories form.

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How Memories Form- Breakthrough Study on Emotion and Neurological Association

"When expressing a verbal lie, the ability to process information correctly while considering the listener"s point of view is a sign that the child has a higher cognitive sense." - http://clapway.com/2015/06/21/children-with-better-working-memory-are-better-liars-456/

Children with a better working memory can tell better lies according to a new study by researchers from the University of North Florida and the University of Sheffield, U.K.

Are Kids Who Tell Better Lies Smarter?

We all know that children don’t always tell the truth, but what makes some children better than others at lying? Dr. Tracy Alloway and her colleagues at the University of North Florida published a study in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology that linked a high verbal working memory to a better ability to tell and remember a lie.

Working memory is about processing information, an essential skill when telling a convincing fib. When expressing a verbal lie, the ability to process information correctly while considering the listener’s point of view is a sign that the child has a higher cognitive sense.

In the study, 137 child participants between 6 and 7 years old were tested for verbal working memory by Dr. Tracy Alloway (UNF) and her colleagues. After their tests, the children were given trivia cards in different colors with the answers printed on the back of each card. Researchers instructed the kids not to peek. Then, the researchers left the room to observe the children via a hidden camera.

Kids with Higher Working Memories Avoid Entrapment

When the researchers came back to ask the trivia questions, the cheating kids, of course gave the correct answers. The researchers then used entrapment to “catch” the kids in their cheating by asking the card’s color. The kids with a better verbal working memory purposefully answered incorrect to conceal their cheating. Those with lower working memories accidentally revealed their peeking by answering the right color.

Though the study showed a connection between verbal working memory and lying, the same cannot be said about visuospatial working memory, which concerns processing visual and spatial information. Researchers believe this to be attributable to the fact lies concern verbal rather than visual construction and recall.

What Can Lying Kids Teach Adults About Working Memory?

Dr. Elena Hoika, psychology professor at the University of Sheffield, acknowledged that adults lie, whether convincingly or not, in nearly a fifth of social interactions over 10 minutes. Adults who lie may be the very parents who lecture their children for lying, but the researchers encourage parents not to become too upset. After all, if your child can tell a believable lie, it might just mean they are more intelligent.

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Children with a Better Working Memory are Better Liars