Why we remember traumatic events

As I began researching I found numerous books of studies of traumatic behavior linked to memory. I quickly came across a study on 25 children that suffered a serious injury leading to hospitalization. The researchers talked to the patients and the parents of the children. They used both free recall and cued recall where they asked both free response and yes or no type questions. A small child named KB swallowed a fishbone and was sent to the emergency room.

Her parents rated her stress level at the top of the scale. Sigmund Freud, a famous philosopher, believed that because infantile memories are weak there is an increase in that memory if the situation is traumatic. This sort of study is often linked to child abuse and those memories after such experiences take place. There is however, controversy on the validity of this type of memory. In another study on infants it was discovered that emotional trauma actually had a negative impact on the development of the brain as a whole.

Chemical receptors in the brain control emotional tides, excitement and calm. Normally, the system is balanced, but certain receptors, called extra-synaptic GABA receptors, are independent agents: they work outside the system to adjust brain waves and mental states according to the levels of internal chemicals. However, the study revealed that these receptors are also involved when the brain encodes and hides memories of a fear-inducing event.

If a traumatic event occurs when these receptors are activated in the brain, the memory cannot be accessed unless those same receptors are activated once again.

Specifically, the scientists discovered that when the drug activated the receptors in mice, it changed the way the stressful event was encoded. In the drug-induced state, the brain used completely different pathways to store the memory.

On a genetic and molecular level, entirely different systems exist to store traumatic memories and normal memories separately.

The scientists believe that this different system may be a protective mechanism in the brain for when an experience is overwhelmingly stressful.

Memories are usually stored in networks that make them easily accessible to consciously remember. How trauma impacts our memory. Please enter email address to continue. Please enter valid email address to continue. Chrome Safari Continue. Print Email Share. Just a Game? Living Well. View all the latest top news in the environmental sciences, or browse the topics below:.

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