Memory Articles

New Understanding Of How We Remember Traumatic Events

Neuroscientist at the University of Queensland called Dr Louise Faber conducted this experiment , the purpose of this experiment was to discover a way in which to explain how emotional events can sometimes lead to disturbing long term memories. This experiment was conducted by scientists that have uncovered a cellular mechanism underlying the formation of emotional memories . Which occurs in the presence of a well known stress hormone. Second Faber demonstrated how noradrenaline or the brains adrenaline , affects the amygdala by controlling chemical and electrical pathways in the brain responsible for memory formation. The result of this experiment was that it was a new way of understanding form long term memories in the amygdala .This experiments and its results can be applied to real life because it can help other scientists to elucidate new targets, leading to better treatments for conditions such as anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081028103111.htm

Some Short-Term Memories Die Suddenly, No Fading

To test the accuracy of short-term visual memory, Weiwei Zhang, a postdoctoral scholar, and Steve Luck, a professor of psychology. These two conducted two experiments in witch the could measure two things : the accuracy of a short-term memory and the probability that the memory still existed. Each test was given to 12 adults . The two test were similar , in the second one they used shapes instead of colors . The experiment was conducted first with three squares ,  with different colors , flashed on a computer screen for a tenth of a second . After four o ten seconds a full spectrum appeared that had all of the colors . Three squares repeated but now all of them were colorless and only one was highlighted . Adults were to recall the color of the highlighted square and to point on the wheel the area were the most closely matched is. Each adult repeated the test 150 times . When the adults retained in there memory the color they could click in the wheel near the are of the color they had projected , but when the color had disappeared from there memory they clicked randomly in the areas of the wheel . “either had the memory or didn’t have the memory,” Luck said, “and the probability of having it decreased between four and ten seconds. The memories did not gradually fade away.” This experiment can be applied to real life because it can provide a way to avoid a confusion that might come up if we might make decisions in our daily life .


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090429091806.htm

Early Scents Really Do Get 'Etched' In The Brain

Yaara Yeshurun and researchers of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel conducted experiment . In the experiment the researchers presented adults with a visual object together with one, and later with a second, set of pleasant and unpleasant odors and sounds while their brains were imaged by functional magnetic resonance imaging. A week later, the researchers presented the same objects inside the fMRI and tested participants' associations of those images with the scents and smells. The researchers stated that people remembered early associations more clearly when being unpleasant . The first olfactory associations revealed a unique activation in brain regions . Researchers stated that they could even predict what a persons memory would reveal later based on the test in the first day . The results show that theres something particularly special about early memories of smells .Yeshurun said. "In our paradigm, initial and later olfactory associations were remembered equally well, but only first associations had the unique brain representation." The results can help in real life because they can  suggest ways to strengthen particular memories.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091105132448.htm