Raising Pain Tolerance Using Guided Imagery (Part 1)
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The assumption that we human beings can control and intentionally forget unwanted memories has been controversial ever since Freud asserted it at the beginning of the 20th century. Now, psychology researcher Gerd Thomas Waldhauser has shown in neuroimaging studies that Freud was correct in his assumptions: in the same way as we can control our motor impulses (we can, for example, rapidly instruct the brain not to catch a cactus which is falling from a table), we can control our memory.
As any student who’s had to study for multiple exams can tell you, trying to learn two different sets of facts one after another is challenging. As you study for the physics exam, almost inevitably some of the information for the history exam is forgotten. It has been widely believed that this interference between memories develops because the brain simply does not have the capacity necessary to process both memories in quick succession. But is this truly the case?
Researchers have identified when an important milestone in infants’ development occurs: the ability to transfer knowledge to new situations. In a series of studies, the researchers found that 8-month-olds had trouble using newly acquired knowledge in a different circumstance, but 16-month-olds could do so.
Long-term exposure to air pollution can lead to physical changes in the brain, as well as learning and memory problems and even depression, new research in mice suggests. While other studies have shown the damaging effects of polluted air on the heart and lungs, this is one of the first long-term studies to show the negative impact on the brain, said Laura Fonken, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in neuroscience at Ohio State University.
Scientists at the University of Michigan Health System have for the first time demonstrated how memory circuits in the brain refine themselves in a living organism through two distinct types of competition between cells. Their results, published today in Neuron, mark a step forward in the search for the causes of neurological disorders associated with abnormal brain circuits, such as Alzheimer’s disease, autism and schizophrenia.
A yet unidentified component of coffee interacts with the beverage’s caffeine, which could be a surprising reason why daily coffee intake protects against Alzheimer’s disease. A new Alzheimer’s disease mouse study by researchers at the University of South Florida found that this interaction boosts blood levels of a critical growth factor that seems to fight off the Alzheimer’s disease process.
Picture a menacing drill sergeant, a gory slaughterhouse, a devastating scene of a natural disaster. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have found that viewing such emotion-laden images immediately after taking a test actually enhances people’s retention of the tested material. The data the researchers gathered in recent studies are the first to show that negative arousal following successful retrieval of information enhances later recall of that information.
Scientists and educators alike have long known that cramming is not an effective way to remember things. With their latest findings, researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan, studying eye movement response in trained mice, have elucidated the neurological mechanism explaining why this is so. Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, their results suggest that protein synthesis in the cerebellum plays a key role in memory consolidation, shedding light on the fundamental neurological processes governing how we remember.
Scientists have developed a way to turn memories on and off — literally with the flip of a switch. Using an electronic system that duplicates the neural signals associated with memory, they managed to replicate the brain function in rats associated with long-term learned behavior, even when the rats had been drugged to forget. “Flip the switch on, and the rats remember. Flip it off, and the rats forget,” said Theodore Berger of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Department of Biomedical Engineering.
When people finish treatment for cancer, they want to bounce back to their former vital selves as quickly as possible. But a new Northwestern Medicine study — one of the largest survivor studies ever conducted – shows many survivors still suffer moderate to severe problems with pain, fatigue, sleep, memory, and concentration three to five years after treatment has ended.
