Beyond Fear

     

              The relationship between learning and memory is very important in psychological research pertaining to human cognition processes.  Retention of memories from events has largely been contributed to the amygdala.  Evolutionary, this temporal lobe structure, aids in interpreting the signals that precede harmful or rewarding outcomes.  The amygdale functions by raising the adrenergic and cortisol stress-hormone systems after being exposed to an emotionally heightened incidence.  This knowledge has been collected through studies that have observed patients that suffer from amygdale damage.  Those that do not have properly functioning amygdalas are in capable of learning from previous emotional experiences.  For example, patients that have this type of mental deficiency were control subjects in a research project in which both arousing and neutral words were read off.  Ideally, the arousing words should be retained longer.  However, these subjects remembered both classes of words identically. 

               

               Brains have the capacity to store a limited amount of information.  In order to process and filter out the important events, the amygdale often only records the general gist of the event.  Most peripheral, or background, information is eliminated.  This focusing is essential for learning. Research of memory making includes a lot of neuro-imaging.  Without the ability to see exactly what is going on inside the brain, it is impossible to learn how memory is stored.  I find it very interesting to analyze how neuro-hormonal systems are involved in remembering emotional experiences.  Are the same feelings recaptured that were initially felt during the incident and to what degree?  How long can these feeling be retrieved?  Do they diminish over time?