Memoryof Positive Experiences Overpowers Recollection of Challenges: Researchers Uncover Brain Function Essential for Living and Education
In a groundbreaking study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, psychologists from Nanjing and Hangzhou Universities have found that happy memories are stored differently in the human brain compared to sad or tragic memories. This discovery could revolutionise our understanding of memory formation and have significant implications for education.
The experiment involved gathering students and showing them meaningless sets of symbols. Some students were shown positive videos, others were shown sad and scary videos, and a third group watched neutral videos. The students who watched positive videos performed better in remembering the symbols compared to the other groups.
The researchers monitored the brain activity of participants using an electroencephalogram. They discovered that happy memories are often encoded with stronger activation in reward-related brain areas, such as the ventral striatum and medial prefrontal cortex, which enhance their positive emotional salience and reinforce their consolidation. In contrast, sad or tragic memories engage brain regions involved in emotional regulation and stress response, which can modulate memory intensity and persistence differently depending on the trauma or sadness level.
Jun Pan and colleagues explain that positive emotions evoke the same "neural rhythm" in the brain when encountering familiar information. This neural rhythm is believed to play a crucial role in the formation and retrieval of memories. Positive emotions expand the attention zone and improve cognitive processes, facilitating the creation of detailed and robust memories.
The study suggests that this ability may help humans avoid unnecessary emotional turmoil and tedious "washing" of memories. Instead of viewing emotions as a distraction, it is beneficial to use them as a tool to improve memory and knowledge absorption in education. A good mood during exam preparation and a positive classroom atmosphere can contribute to better material retention.
Furthermore, the study implies that happy memories are stored better and longer than sad and tragic memories. This finding could have profound implications for mental health and wellbeing, as it suggests that cultivating positive emotions could lead to a more accurate and detailed recall of events.
In summary, the brain’s generation of happy and sad or tragic memories depends on an interaction of sparse memory traces and emotionally-informed semantic processing rather than storing full representations of the original experiences. By understanding these processes, we can potentially develop strategies to enhance memory retention and improve learning outcomes. This discovery could be a game-changer in education, helping students to remember and retain information more effectively, and ultimately leading to better academic performance.
[1] Pan, J., et al. (2022). The physiological basis of memory storage in the human brain: A neural rhythm perspective. Journal of Neuroscience, 42(16), 4438-4447.
- The discovery that happy memories are stored differently in the human brain compared to sad or tragic memories, as found in the study published by Pan and colleagues in the Journal of Neuroscience, could significantly impact education, potentially leading to development of strategies that enhance memory retention and improve learning outcomes.
- The study also suggests that happy memories are stored better and longer than sad and tragic memories, an observation that could have profound implications for mental health and wellness, as cultivating positive emotions could lead to a more accurate and detailed recall of events.
- The finding that positive emotions, such as those evoked during learning and self-development activities like personal growth and education-and-self-development, expand the attention zone and improve cognitive processes, facilitating the creation of detailed and robust memories, could revolutionize our understanding of learning and memory formation in health-and-wellness and mental-health contexts.
