Sometimes we wish that the mind would not play tricks on us by bringing back memories that were not pleasant for us and that is why we dream of eliminating them from our memory.
In the last 10 to 15 years, researchers have gained a better understanding of how human memories are formed. The latest results of research on the structure of our memory have been published on the portal ‘Medicalxpress’.
Dr. Susannah Tye, an assistant professor in the departments of psychiatry and psychology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, says that lbad memories affect people on two levels: both mentally and physically.
«We don’t remember everything, only fragments»says Jason Chan, assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State University. “We take these pieces (when we have a memory) and piece together a story that makes sense to us. But it could be wrong.» said.
Those memories can also be altered. Neuroscientist R. Douglas Fields explains in his blog that when a specific memory is retrieved, it is vulnerable to being altered or even extinguished for a certain period of time.
As an example, he suggested a conversation in which a panda bear is discussed. The scientist asks a couple of days later about the animal and they answer that the object of the dialogue was a panda. The neuroscientist assures that they were actually talking about a grizzly bear and a couple of days later, he asks again. In this case it will be more difficult to remember that the bear was a panda, because the grizzly was updated in memory.
There are other methods of altering memories. It has been shown that certain drugs and protein inhibitors make memories more malleable. Electrical discharges in the brain can also erase certain memories. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered a gene that may help with memory extinction. Even alcohol can do this job.
Source: NewsRt