Patients in the study were examined using an fMRI machine such as this one. fMRI is a noninvasive way to measure and map activity in the brain. Getty Images
By Laura Baisas, Popular Science, November 30, 2023
New research indicates that the traumatic memories of patients with post-traumatic stress disorder are represented very differently in the brain than “regular” sad autobiographical memories. A small study published November 30 in the journal Nature Neuroscience supports the idea that traumatic memories are a different cognitive entity than more routine bad memories. This may provide a biological explanation for why recalling traumatic memories can manifest as intrusive thoughts that are different from other negative recollections.
The study was conducted by a team from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and Yale University. It examined patients’ real-life personal memories in an effort to link their lived experiences with the brain’s functioning.
“For people with PTSD, recalling traumatic memories often displays as intrusions that differ profoundly from processing of ‘regular’ negative memories, yet until now, the neurobiological reasons for this qualitative difference have been poorly understood,” study co-author and Icahn Mount Sinai neuroscientist Daniela Schiller, said in a statement. “Our data show that the brain does not treat traumatic memories as regular memories, or perhaps even as memories at all. We observed that brain regions known to be involved in memory are not activated when recalling a traumatic experience.”
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