![]() CNS: How did you become personally interested in this research area? So one might have trouble remembering whether they were supposed to pick up the kids at 3 or 5 in the afternoon simply because that arrangement was discussed near in time to a person suppressing thoughts about an earlier argument they had with someone. In this sense, the ability forget might be beneficial to daily functioning.īut this new research indicates that attempts to push unwanted memories out of mind also have the unintended side effect of leaving the brain in a temporary state of general amnesia, handicapping the ability to form detailed new memories about life events. People do this because the more one pushes such unwanted memories out of mind, the harder it becomes to later remember those specific instances – something we have shown in past work. Hulbert: Well, for one, when people consistently are confronted with reminders to intrusive memories, they often make an effort to exclude these unpleasant memories from mind, simply to cope. CNS: In what circumstances might this occur? Thus, people induced amnesia in themselves, by engaging in a cognitive activity that disrupts hippocampal function. We showed that this process induced a short-term disruption in hippocampal function that created windows of amnesia in people. In our particular procedure, this hippocampal disruption was achieved by asking people to suppress memory retrieval – i.e., to stop themselves from retrieving a memory given a reminder to it – a process known to reduce hippocampal activity. In our study, we showed that, in the natural course of events, people can engage in mental activities that temporarily disrupt hippocampal function – in reversible fashion – so that, for brief windows of time, the ability to encode or consolidate memories is temporarily disabled, leading to memory loss much like organic amnesia. With organic amnesia, a person suffers permanent damage to key memory structures, like the hippocampus, leading to permanent disruption to the ability to store new episodic memories. Hulbert: By amnesia, we mean a loss of episodic memory for personal experiences arising as a result of disruption to hippocampal functions needed to encode and consolidate those memories. CNS: How does the induced amnesia you studied differ from other forms of amnesia? These amnesic shadows were still present after 24 hours.ĬNS spoke to Hulbert about this study, widely reported in the press, and its broader implications for trying to suppress memories, particularly following a traumatic event. As reported in Nature Communications this month, the researchers found that, compared with being surrounded by think trials, participants accurately recalled the object’s identity about 45% less frequently if the scene was presented shortly before or after the no-think – memory suppression – trials. ![]() The researchers wanted to understand if surrounding the bystander pictures with no-think trials reduced later memory for the pictures, creating an “amnesic shadow.” In a final memory test, participants had to recall the object that had appeared in each bystander scene. Each of these pictures presented an object in a location, such as a peacock in a parking lot or a soccer ball on a table, and participants had to imagine how the object came to its location. Researchers have used this think/no-think paradigm extensively in the past to study how suppressing an unwanted memory can make it harder to retrieve the suppressed memory later on.įor the new study, Justin Hulbert (now at Bard College), Richard Henson, and Anderson inserted novel (“bystander”) pictures in between think and no-think trials. In the experiment, after studying word pairs such as “leap-ballet,” participants had to either retrieve (“think” trials) or suppress retrieval (“no-think” trials) of the second word in each pair, given the first word as a reminder. The work, says senior author Michael Anderson of the University of Cambridge, “suggests that the functional state of the hippocampus can be dynamically disrupted by cognitive control, creating ‘virtual lesions’ that impede memory functioning.” The researchers were inspired by the desire to understand the memory impairments individuals commonly report after a trauma. According to a new study, this temporary state of amnesia mimics organic amnesia, disrupting the processes in the hippocampus that lead to long-term memory creation. When we try to forget something unpleasant, whether a bad argument or a traumatic event, we may be unintentionally inducing amnesia of unrelated memories. Quick Tips for Getting Started on Twitter.The Distinguished Career Contributions Award.Distinguished Career Contributions Award Lecture.Annual Meeting Workshop Policy & Application.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |