What Is The Relationship Between Memory And Emotions - Essay Example

What is the relationship between memory and emotions? Introduction In the life of every human being,several events happen on daily basis, for some, we are active participants but for others, we are mere victims. As times rolls by, we bring back those experiences in our memory and reflect on them. The extent of the experiences at their time of occurrence determines our reactions to their experiences, at the same time the human brain has the capacity to record different events that happen within our environment. Only those things that are significant are stored and those that are of less important and discarded immediately after they occur, this are the things that we may not even remember even if we happen to have been at the scene. How human memory works For events stored in the human brain, the length of their stay or the extent to which they can be remembered depends on their perceived significance. There are those things that the brain can keep forever, and their remembrance elicits fresh memories as they are occurring at that very time. Memory is an important subject when it comes to psychology, here, it is usually described as the process by which information is encoded, stored and retrieved over time1. The process of encoding allows information from outside sources to reach our innermost senses in the brain. This information that reaches our senses is usually in terms of chemical and physical stimuli as well as different other forms by which it can be transmitted. In this stage, when this information is received, it has to be changed into a form that allows the memory to do effective encoding. After the information is encoded, the second stage entails the process of storing, here; the information is well maintained for a long period of time depending on its significance. The information in the human memory can be stored in the short or long term, the determinant of which is its relevance and the number of times the information is used after storage. The third most important stage in human memory is referred to as retrieval, this is the process by which information which is stored is brought back to the short term memory for use, in this regard, information is said to have been retrieved. The information in the memory has to be relocated and returned to our consciousness whenever it is needed. Information that is very significant to an individual is easily retrieved and brought back to consciousness whenever it is needed, that which is not is usually lost, a process called forgetting.Different information reflects different experiences that happened at the time the information was being encoded in the human brain, this information influences ones emotions. The concept of emotions Emotion is a common term that features prominently in the field of psychology and philosophy as well as other related fields. It is usually described as the subjective and conscious experience that is characterised primarily by our various psychological expressions, biological reactions as well as our prevailing state of the mind. There are various determinants of emotions in our daily life, most often, it is usually associated and considered to be reciprocally influenced by prevailing moods, an individual’s temperament, personality and some extent, disposition and motivation2.Biologically, people’s emotions are largely influenced and regulated by different hormones and neuro-transmitters that are produced by the body. Alternatively, emotions can be described as being positive or negative experiences that are often associated with a specific pattern of physiological activity. Past events that are stored in our brains also play an important part in the kinds of emotions that are portrayed. For instance, a person that has undergone negative experiences in life is likely to develop certain kinds emotions compared to one to one that has had positive experiences. The kind of emotions that we portray determines our present actions and behavior in our immediate environment. Is there any relationship between memory and emotions? Memory has often been said to have a direct relationship with emotions; in fact, emotions have been thought to have an impact on memory. Different research has been conducted by different psychologists and scholars on this crucial subject, the result has shown that most vivid autobiographical memories tend to be those related to emotional events, which are often recalled frequently and with much clarity as compared to neutral events happening in our environment3. It should be understood that artificially inducing this instinct through traumatic physical or emotional stimuli has the potential to essentially create the same psychological condition that intensifies memory retention ability through exciting neuro-chemical activity, that affects the specific areas of the brain that concern with encoding and recalling memory. The effect that enhances memory has often demonstrated in a variety of laboratory studies by use of different kinds of stimuli that range from words to pictures, visual and audio-visual factors as well as autobiographic memory studies. Over the past century, there have been important advances in the field of psychology, in order to establish the relationship between memory and emotion. One of the important developments that have been witnessed is the growing recognition that there is a high number of memory systems that are directly governed by distinct and interacting neural substrates. The main aim of these research activities has always been to find out any existing potential relationship between emotions and memory in human beings over their different activities of life. Different investigations that have been carried out on the influence of emotions on memory have tended to focus on two medial temporal lobe systems in the human brain. The first one is usually linked to amygdala; this one is more or less specialized in a certain way so that it only deals with the processing of different kinds of information that is encoded in the brain of a person. The hallmark of this memory system is that it is essential in the acquisition as well as expression of fear conditioning, in this process; a neutral stimulus acquires aversive properties by the virtue of having to be paired with an aversive event. The second system is that which is linked to the hippocampal complex, this one is necessary for the declarative or episodic memory, in some special cases, this kind of memory has often been thought of as a primary memory system in humans. This is because of the fact that it regulates and controls memory, that is, the process of recollection of various events that happened before at will. These two systems provide important information that is highly essential in determining the effect of certain events stored in memory and their effect on emotions of a particular individual. So far, there is reliable evidence that these two memory systems are very much unrelated and independent; this is an observation that was made from patients with focal lesions to the amygdala or hippocampus. Psychologists used a special experiment in order to determine the independence that exists between these two brain systems as well as to establish their relationship between memory and emotion. In a classical conditioning paradigm, a blue square is paired with an aversive shock and placed in the wrist of one of the patients, observations were made and recorded on the behavior of the patient under different circumstances. It is important to realize that even when these two brain systems operate independently, they are able to effectively interact in certain subtle ways that are considered essential. It is therefore important to note that most research activities have concentrated on examining different interactions and how they influence independence of the brain systems. It is surprising that findings from these studies show enough evidence that memories for emotional events have a persistence and vividness that other memories do not seem to have4. The existing memory capability that has been observed for emotional events is largely due to amygdala’s influence on the process of encoding and storage of memories that are purely depended on hippocampal systems of the brain. This way it is easier to point out at a direct relationship between the brains memory and emotions. It is easier for one to developed emotional memories from different events that happened in the environment. However, not all events that happen in the environment have the ability to elicit emotional memories, only those that are vivid enough can do so. The rest of the events are usually lost when the person cannot remember them, in this case, they are usually said to have been forgotten, the human brain makes selective storage of different actions and activities. In everyday life, people are often actively involved in regulations of their emotions in different ways for different reasons; one of the common ways of how emotions are usually suppressed by people is by suppression, in this process. Outside signs of emotions are usually inhibited with individuals opting to keep calm amidst pressing emotional issues. At the same time, there are those people who opt to make expressive suppression of emotions; here the process of suppression is usually done with an aim of portraying a calm appearance despite feeling emotional about different aspects. It is important to understand that the emotions being suppressed can either be positive or negative. This kind of emotional self regulation is said to often come with a certain cognitive price that a particular person has to pay. It should be understood that efforts that are made in an effort to regulate the feelings of an individual are important in creating the relationship between memory and emotions. From the above example, it can be seen that when individuals are able to suppress their emotions, they can later retrieve them and express them later in terms of their emotions. The kind of expression that will be portrayed by particular individuals will depend on the ability of their memory to retrieve the suppressed emotions. Other psychology research experts have pointed out that sometimes, a particular experience can happen to be so exciting emotionally in such a way that it leaves a scar on the cerebral tissues. This car is what is referred as memory, a large number of studies have seemed to be in tandem with this proposition. For instance, research findings from other experiments indicated that when participants were made to views either emotional or neutral film clip, the results were highly varied. The results show that stimuli that seemed to be highly emotional were much remembered as compared to those that were neutral. This was particularly in cases where perceptually salient features were concerned; the participants had many details about the stimuli that were involving and experiential. However, it is important to note that the human brain should not be fully relied on to store important information. This is because of the fact that human brain may not be a position to reveal all the finer details of the particular event, to some extent, there will always be certain finer details that will be missing prominently. For instance, suppose there was a certain eventful activity, say an accident or crime or a social interaction activity that seemed very important. The people present at the time of the event may not be in a position to effectively recall every event that happened, there will always be several factors determining the extent to which certain information is stored. Psychological research experts on these issues have carried out different laboratory studies concerning factors that determine the extent to which information is stored in memory and its related emotional effects after passage of time. From their research findings, it has been found out that average memory performance scores have never reached 100%, at the same time, estimated of variability reveal that those people who are exposed to the same emotional events are quite different from each other, especially when it comes to how they are remembers. While there are people with the ability to effectively remember emotional experiences accurately, others are only left with cliff notes. However, it is evident that memory plays an important part in determining the kind of emotions that people develop. Works Cited Hertel, Paula. Memory for emotional and nonemotional events in depression: A question. New York: Oxford University Press: 2004. Print. Kay Milton & Marushka Svasek. Mixed Emotions: Anthropological Studies of Feeling. Oxford: Bloomsbury Academic, 2005. Print. Richards Jane. The Cognitive Consequences of Concealing Feelings. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13.4. 2004: 131-134. Sundstrøm, Martin. "Modeling recall memory for emotional objects in Alzheimers disease". Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition 18.2 2011: 396–413. Read More