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My Most Listened to Songs of 2022: David Orlowsky David Bergmuller – Eileen
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Listen to La Brega
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How The Brain Maintains Memories
A team of neuroscientists at the University of Toronto in Canada has discovered a reason why we often struggle to remember small details of past experiences.
Many events in our lives resemble experiences we have had before, without being identical to them.
Whenever you attend a party, for example, you may well take along a gift, such as a bottle of wine or a box of chocolates, but the gift will differ on each occasion.
Researchers believe that as our memories for such events become older, the incidental details unique to each event (such as the identity of the gift) are mostly forgotten.
However, the common underlying patterns (what parties are like in general) are retained. This allows us to accumulate knowledge to guide our behavior in similar situations in the future.
Studies in rodents and people have shown that a region of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) stores long-term memories about experiences.
But to what extent do neurons in this region represent abstract generalized knowledge as opposed to the specific incidental details?
“Memories of recent experiences are rich in incidental detail but, with time, the brain is thought to extract important information that is common across various past experiences,” said Dr. Kaori Takehara-Nishiuchi, senior author of the study.
“We predicted that groups of neurons in the mPFC build representations of this information over the period when long-term memory consolidation is known to take place, and that this information has a larger representation in the brain than the smaller details.”
To test their prediction, Dr. Takehara-Nishiuchi and her colleagues studied how two different memories with overlapping associative features are coded by neuron groups in the mPFC of rat brains, and how these codes change over time.
Rats were given two experiences with an interval between each: one involving a light and tone stimulus, and the other involving a physical stimulus. This gave them two memories that shared a common stimulus relationship.
The researchers then tracked the neuron activity in the animals’ brains from the first day of learning to four weeks following their experiences.
“This experiment revealed that groups of neurons in the mPFC initially encode both the unique and shared features of the stimuli in a similar way,” said Mark Morrissey, first author on the study.
“However, over the course of a month, the coding becomes more sensitive to the shared features and less sensitive to the unique features, which become lost.”
Further experiments also revealed that the brain can adapt the general knowledge gained from multiple experiences immediately to a new situation.
“This goes some way to answering the long-standing question of whether the formation of generalized memory is simply a result of the brain’s network ‘forgetting’ incidental features,” Morrissey said.
“On the contrary, we show that groups of neurons develop coding to store shared information from different experiences while, seemingly independently, losing selectivity for irrelevant details.”
“The unique coding property of the mPFC identified in the study may support its role in the formation, maintenance, and updating of associative knowledge structures that help support flexible and adaptive behavior in rats and other animals,” he said.
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Favorite Songs I Listened to in 2022: Nemahsis – I’m not gonna kill you
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Grateful for Wind
I am grateful for Wind. It carries scent, to me and from me. The Wind moves the grass, trees, water, rocks. It’s Wind even now. -
Watch: Creativity and the brain: How the arts can shape well-being
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What works and will work for you handout
With this handout I usually had folks write in the category areas what worked for them, what didn’t work, and what will work in the future.
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My Fav Songs of 2022: Kae Tempest – No Prizes
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Grateful for Stillness
This week I am grateful for Stillness, after the Silence-ness of last week.
When you are still, with your breath, with your body, with your thoughts …. every-things are still-moving. Fast, slow, swirling, wiggling, inhaling, exhaling, even the biggest thing is small and sometimes the smallest thing seems big …. just be Still-ness.
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Cognitive Distortions
A basic handout I have used with groups. Ideally I use handouts only to get a conversation going. The handout becomes a frame work for people to open up and start sharing.
Cognitive Distortions and Strategies to dispute them
- Personalizing: When you blame yourself entirely as the cause of something or blame someone else as the sole reason why something happens . “It’s my fault ” “It’s his/her fault.”
Strategy: Don’t look for blame. Find other causes. List other possibilities.
- All or nothing/black and white thinking: When you use extreme terms, “all”, “never”, “none”, “everybody”, “no one”. Also watch for “can’t”.
Strategy: Look for gray areas. Modify your language by substituting less extreme terms such as “some”, “often”, “most”.
- Catastrophizing: When you predict or expect the worst will happen.
Strategy: Expect more positive outcomes and possibilities.
- Should-ing: When you refer to (or rely on) your list of inflexible rules of acceptable behavior and believe you’re guilty or unworthy if you violate the rules. Or, when you get angry with others if they break the (your) rules. This results in “always having to be right “, or being “super human” or “perfect”.
Strategy: Change your language: “I should/must” to “I’d prefer” or “I’d rather”.
- Over-generalizing: When you make an overall assessment based on one example or incident.
Strategy: Remember that no one situation can exactly predict future outcomes. Look for individuality in each case. Remember that possibilities may exist that have not existed before by recognizing that you have the ability to change, and that things are always changing.
- Fallacy of fairness: When you expect things to work out based on some unseen system of “karma”, balance, morality, payback, justice, or what “should be fair”.
Strategy: Change your expectations. There is no inherent system of fairness. Things can happen for no apparent reason.
- Labeling/Name calling: When you attach powerful words or labels to yourself or others as if those words describe you, or them, or the situation completely. “This day is terrible”, or I’m stupid”.
Strategy: Define the term, see if it is really accurate. Use only accurate terms. Avoid intense labeling and name-calling. Use less weighted, destructive or inflammatory words. Are you using a double standard? Are you judging yourself more harshly than others would judge you or than you would judge others?
- Emotional reasoning: When you use your emotions or feelings as proof of how things are. “I feel so sad; things must be hopeless”.
Strategy: Evaluate the evidence objectively. Feelings are not proof of how things are or will be. Recognize that emotions change.
- Mind-reading: When you know what others are thinking and why they act the way they do. Particularly, you “know” how people think and feel about you.
Strategy: Seek other explanations for why people behave the way they do. Don’t assume. Check it out. Ask for their thoughts, opinions and feedback. Remind yourself that you don’t know what they are thinking.
- Disqualifying the positive: When you devalue anything “good” in a particular situation in light of the “bad”.
Strategy: Make an accurate assessment. See that “negatives” or “shortcomings” don’t erase strengths and assets, but that these can co-exist.
- Comparing: When you measure yourself against others, focusing on their accomplishments and attributes, or when you compare yourself to your own ideal.
Strategy: One can’t compare apples and oranges. We’re all different with different qualities. We can usually find somebody who may be “better” in some way. So what? That doesn’t help. Focus on your own inherent worth and aspirations instead.
- Personalizing: When you blame yourself entirely as the cause of something or blame someone else as the sole reason why something happens . “It’s my fault ” “It’s his/her fault.”
RichardbBrunner 