3 of the Most Interesting Articles Ever

New Understanding of How We Remember Traumatic Events
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081028103111.htm

Who conducted the experiment: Neuroscientists at The University of Queensland.

Overview of Experiment: These neuroscientists have discovered a way to explain how we remember traumatic events easily, they did this by studying the almond shaped part of the brain called the amygdala in which they found out that the formation of emotional memories occur in the presence of a stress hormone that our bodies develop. They have been successful at showing that we human beings develop a stress hormone that lie in the formation of emotional memories. They say that memories that we store for a long time and vividly are usually associated with emotions such as fear, love and rage. According to Dr Faber, her team's discovery intended to help other scientists to elucidate new targets, leading to better treatments for conditions such as anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder.

This research may be applied to real-life because we are to know and be conscious that traumatic events, whether they’d be emotional, psychological or just about anything, we should know that they will probably be kept longer and vivid in our memories since we have a specific part of the brain which focuses on emotional feelings and definitely impact us the most in respect to the development of these memories.

Some Short-Term Memories Die Suddenly, No Fading
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090429091806.htm

Who conducted the experiment: Researchers at the University of California; Weiwei Zhang, a postdoctoral scholar, and Steve Luck, a professor of psychology, both at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain.

Overview of the experiment: Chang and Luck developed an experiment that consisted in 2 tests. The first test consisted in measuring the accuracy of a short-term memory and the second consisted in measuring the probability that memory still existed. Each test was given to 12 adults. In the first test, the adults were shown of box with 4 squares in it, each squared filled with a different color. They were shown a color wheel and later show a black box with 4 squares in it, only 1 highlighted. They were told to say the color that should be in the highlighted square of the big box. They found out that the subject either chose a similar color to the one it had before or they didn’t remember at all. The second test was similar to the first just that they used shapes instead of colors. The results of the experiment show that subjects either have the memories or they don’t and that memories do not gradually fade.

This could be important in real-life because it provides a mechanism to help us avoid the confusion that might arise if we tried to make decisions on the basis of weak, inaccurate memories.

The Memories You Want To Forget Are The Hardest Ones To Lose
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070815105026.htm

Who conducted the experiment: Keith Payne, an assistant professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences and former psychology graduate student Elizabeth Corrigan.

Overview of the experiment: The experiment consisted in showing that the memories we want to forget are the hardest ones to do so because they revolve around emotional constraints, and it was shown that emotion places limits on the ability to control the contents of the mind. They developed the experiment by showing 218 subjects to react to photographs instead of text. The researchers found that the subjects could not intentionally forget emotional events as easily as ordinary ones. They also found that both pleasant and unpleasant emotional memories are resistant to intentional forgetting.

The experiment may be applied to real-life since we are to be well informed of how memories that we really want to forget are the hardest ones to do so since emotions limit us to control the contents of our mind even though if you have a great will power, you might be able to withdraw memories we don’t want in our brains. In the end we have to always keep in mind that intentional forgetting of memories is worse than unintentional forgetting of memories since we tend to concentrate on the things we don’t want in our lives or in our memory which can result in harsh conditions.