Study Reveals How Bad Experiences Change the Brain to Produce Memories

A study, recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, confirmed longstanding speculations regarding how painful memories are internally processed in the brain. Designed to test the century-old Hebbian hypothesis, the study analyzed the neuron connections formed following auditory tones combined with mild electric shocks in order to evaluate how these memories were formed compared to normal stimuli. By silencing electrical activity within the amygdala neurons during this experiment, memories concerning the painful stimuli were found to be identical to those without the painful shocks. This revealed that during pain, the brain strengthens the connections that effectively form the memory as a survival instinct to associate the situation with threats to well-being.  The lead researcher reported, “This takes us a step closer to understanding how aversive experiences are translated by the nervous system into unpleasant memories. These processes for triggering aversive memory storage may represent a general mechanism controlling memory formation that is shared across other learning systems in the brain.” To learn more about this study, click here.