Brain Study Suggests Traumatic Memories Are Processed as Present Experience
Brain Study Suggests Traumatic Memories Are Processed as Present Experience
Traumatic memories had their own neural mechanism, brain scans showed, which may help explain their vivid and intrusive nature.
Ideally, such treatments can help transform the traumatic memory into one that more closely resembles ordinary sad memories. “It’s like having a block in the right place,” he said. “If I can access a memory, I know it’s a memory. I know it’s not happening to me now.”
that's pretty awesome stuff.. it really sounds like they're starting to understand PTSD a lot better..
... surprising exactly 0 trauma survivors
I was going to say, and I know this is unscientific, "No shit, its hurting me right fucking now".
It's good to have words (and especially scientific research) to be able to better understand the experience. It also helps survivors know there's nothing "wrong" with them.
I recommend "the body keeps the score" by Bessel van der Kolk to read if you are interested in this. If you are traumatised, beware, this is a tough read.
As other posters already wrote, this isn't new.
That would explain my adrenaline dumps
This isn’t new information — traumatologists have known this for a long, long time. Glad that info like this is making news in the NY Times, though!
Word, now tell us how to turn it off please
EMDR might work:
It's always good to have empirical evidence and scientific studies to back up what we already know :)
Uh oh. There is green shit in your brain.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“What it tells us is that the brain is in a different state in the two memories,” said Daniela Schiller, a neuroscientist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and one of the authors of the study.
The traumatic memories appeared to engage a different area of the brain — the posterior cingulate cortex, or P.C.C., which is usually involved in internally directed thought, like introspection or daydreaming.
In recent years, many Americans have embraced treatments such as prolonged exposure therapy and eye movement reprocessing and desensitization, or EMDR, which revisit traumatic memories in hopes of draining them of their destructive force.
In therapy, trying to “build a story, a coherent memory,” the clinician helped the medic fill in details around the edges of that scene, including a dead soldier who lay nearby, shooting in the background, and his own panicked use of too many bandages.
The posterior cingulate cortex is “really involved in the reliving of memories,” and in seeking self-relevance, which may explain why a sensory reminder may cause overwhelming fear or panic.
While most experts agree that motor vehicle accidents, sexual assaults or military combat are traumatic events, there is disagreement about whether experiences like racism or pandemic stress should be viewed as the basis for a PTSD diagnosis, he said.
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