“How did you get home? I don’t remember. How did you get there? I don’t remember. Where was the place? I don’t remember. How many years ago was it? I don’t know. But I had one beer.” I am sure many of you have listened to this on repeat on several radio stations or news channels: our dear president Trump just casually mocking Dr. Christine Blasey Ford because she was unable to provide minute details associated with her sexual assault 30+ years ago. Recently, as I was listening to updates regarding the Kavanaugh case, I wondered how emotional stress during traumatic events affects memory. I have heard mixed reviews throughout the years. Are traumatic events remembered more vividly because of the high emotional stress state or are there lapses in memory because of it?
A recent story on NPR reported that our memory recall actually works pretty well if we are recalling a traumatic event (Chatterjee, 2018). According to Jim Hopper, a teaching associate in psychology at Harvard University referenced in Chatterjee’s article, the stress hormones released and high stress state during a traumatic event “alters the function of the hippocampus and puts it into a super-encoding mode.” So our memories regarding specific events during that time are clearly remembered. However, according to a more credible source, associations between the main negative elements and surrounding neutral elements of that event are generally lost or not coherent (Bisby, Horner, Bush, & Burgess, 2018). In other words, someone will remember a man mockingly laughing at her distinctly but will likely be unable to associate and recall the location where it occurred. To answer my question above, there is conflicting evidence regarding whether or not strong emotional content strengthens of weakens memory of such events (Bisby et al., 2018); there is evidence that suggests both. Results in the article that I found were consistent with the idea that memory of a negative element itself will be enhanced but the context associated with that event is weakened (Bisby et al., 2018). The researches reasoned that the negative emotion experienced during the traumatic event might down-modulate the hippocampal processing and consequently harm formation of associative memory. So in Dr. Ford’s defense, there is a physiological explanation as to why she does not remember how she got there, how she got home, or where the place was.
Bisby, J. A., Horner, A. J., Bush, D., & Burgess, N. (2018). Negative emotional content disrupts the coherence of episodic memories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(2), 243-256. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000356
"How Trauma Affects Memory: Scientists Weigh In On The Kavanaugh Hearing” by Rhitu Chatterjee. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/09/28/652524372/how-trauma-affects-memory-scientists-weigh-in-on-the-kavanaugh-hearing
Also in conjunction to Dr. Ford's defense, in an article about " Memory Distortion for Traumatic Events: The Role of Mental Imagery," the authors wrote about how a person's memories for traumatic events are easily distorted just like normal memories. For traumatic events memory distortion seems to be following a distinct pattern, that people tend to remember more trauma than they experienced, a phenomenon which is referred to as “memory amplification.” Memory amplification carries unfortunate consequences: the more amplification a person demonstrates, the more likely they are to report the “re-experiencing” symptoms associated with PTSD, such as intrusive thoughts and images. Distortion of memory is caused is through source monitoring framework (SMF), SMF states that memory distortion occurs because we do not store our memories specifying the origins of individual detail so it's difficult to recall the details if asked to remember how certain events happened. The researchers believe that developing a better understanding of source monitoring errors in traumatic memory distortion should be a research priority. How people exposed to trauma remember and misremember aspects of their experiences in ways that influence their recovery is both theoretically and practically important.
ReplyDeleteSource: Strange, D., & Takarangi, M. K. T. (2015). Memory Distortion for Traumatic Events: The Role of Mental Imagery. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 6, 27. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2015.00027
In a different setting and not speaking to sexual assault, I have found myself experiencing a dramatic experience when I was young in the loss of a family member. My entire life i have tried to understand why it is that I cannot think of events that happened around that time in my childhood, everything seems to be blurry. I believe that our bodies store those dramatic memories away because of the negative implications they had phsyioligcalxly. Our bodies want us to live full lives without the stress of thinking of those moments again, we have very resilient bodies. These dramatic memories may also be known as "flashbulb" memories. This memories have a high likelihood of being distorted by others and they have the ability to get worse overtime, hence why I believe I have little knowledge of those times. I believe that this topic of science is under studied due to its differences in experience and brain memory, whether improved in some cases or in my case degraded. The brain is truly something special and unknown.
ReplyDeletevan der Kolk, B.A. & Fisler, R. J Trauma Stress (1995) 8: 505. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02102887
Bonanno, G. A. (2004). Loss, Trauma, and Human Resilience: Have We Underestimated the Human Capacity to Thrive After Extremely Aversive Events? American Psychologist, 59(1), 20-28.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.59.1.20