This research strongly suggests that the emotional content of long-term memories can be removed by interrupting the labile phase of long-term memory storage.

Another study, this time from the Universiteit van Amsterdam, demonstrates that memories – most particularly long-term fear memories – are encoded when they first happen and then again whenever we re-store those memories. There is a short period of time in which the brain must chemically “prepare” and then “store” the memory. Whenever we bring the memory back to mind, it must go through the same process to re-store it in the brain. In both of these labile phases, the memory is vulnerable to change.

This research strongly suggests that memories are not, therefore, permanent structures in the brain. Their emotional content can be removed by interrupting the labile phase of long-term memory storage.

I wrote about the brain’s file cabinet in another post (Click here to read). Basically, the brain requires a chemical to access memories and to code them back after accessing them. It’s as though we take each memory, like a file, out of the long-term memory cabinet, close the cabinet, look at the file, use it, then open the cabinet again to put the file back in. If I understand Kindt’s research correctly, interrupting that process at the “putting back in” phase can, in theory, stop the perpetuation of the effects of fear memories by eliminating the fear in the memories.

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“When subjects posed expressions of fear, they had a subjectively larger visual field, faster eye movements during target localization and an increase in nasal volume and air velocity during inspiration.”

“When subjects posed expressions of fear, they had a subjectively larger visual field, faster eye movements during target localization and an increase in nasal volume and air velocity during inspiration,” observed researcher Dr Joshua M Susskind and colleagues from the Department of Psychology, University of Toronto in Canada. The opposite pattern was found for disgust. The study was supported by a Canada Research Chairs program and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council grant and published in the peer-reviewed science journal Nature Neuroscience.

Using computer-generated graphics, the researchers trained a group of undergraduate students to model a set of facial expressions and then tested their vision and the airflow through their nose. During the training, the participants were presented with facial examples from one of eight different individuals, four men and four women, displaying six different emotional expressions. They used pictures of faces showing anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise. After the participants rated these faces to identify which type of expression was shown, they were then asked to perform the face themselves. For fear, they were asked to furrow the brow by contracting the muscles, widen the eyes and flare the nostrils. For neutral expressions, they were asked to relax their muscles. Read the rest of this entry »

Increased well-being from an £800 course of therapy was so large that it would take a pay rise of over £25,000 to achieve an equivalent increase in well-being.

Research by Chris Boyce of the University of Warwick and Alex Wood of the University of Manchester in the UK finds that psychological therapy could be 32 times more cost effective at making you happy than simply obtaining more money. After comparing large data sets of thousands of people, they showed that the increase in well-being from an £800 course of therapy was so large that it would take a pay rise of over £25,000 to achieve an equivalent increase in well-being.

Over the last 50 years developed countries have not seen any increases to national happiness in spite of huge economic gains. Mental health on the other hand appears to be deteriorating worldwide.

Chris Boyce: “We have shown that psychological therapy could be much more cost effective than financial compensation at alleviating psychological distress. This is not only important in courts of law, where huge financial awards are the default way in which pain and suffering are compensated, but has wider implications for public health and well-being.”

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Stress can be easily managed by you from within you.

2009 “Perceptions of Stress in Adults”, a part of APA Study, Stress in America survey results show that adults continue to report high levels of stress and many report that their stress has increased over the past year. Additionally, many adults are reporting physical symptoms of stress.

75% of adults reported experiencing moderate to high levels of stress in the past month (24 % extreme, 51 % moderate) and 42 % reported that their stress has increased in the past year. 43 % of adults say they eat too much or eat unhealthy foods as a result of stress. 37% report skipping a meal because they were under stress.

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A study into the relationship between emotional intelligence and educational achievement, presented at The British Psychological Society’s Education Section Annual Conference, found that emotional intelligence predicts exam success. So, the answer to the question is – YES!

A significant relationship was found between boys’ and girls’ emotional intelligence and their SAT and GCSE English scores. Those with higher emotional intelligence scores fared significantly better than those with lower emotional intelligence scores.

What does that have to do with Rapid Eye Technology? Plenty!

Rapid Eye Technology, Emotional Freedom Technique, and Self-Hypnosis, are great for training teenagers how to manage their emotions – in other words, improving their emotional intelligence levels.

“Further detailed analysis of the results [of the studies] suggests that emotional intelligence may moderate the effects of IQ on academic achievement. Faced with failure, a student low on IQ but who is emotionally intelligent will be able to manage their emotions surrounding failure, reconcile poor performance and work to improve; a student low on IQ and low emotional intelligence may find failure more difficult to deal with, which undermines their academic motivation.”

Those students with better emotional management strategies in place are more likely to do better academically than their peers with fewer such inner resources.