According to an article from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, memories you want to forget are the hardest ones to lose. This may explain why some memories can "haunt" you all your life.

In the early 1990s, the rage was "repressed memories" of abuse. It was theorized that extremely traumatic memories of sexual and other types of abuse were easily masked from consciousness by the emotional trauma. Basically, the theory was that if it hurt enough, you'd easily forget the memory. After a few high-profile cases resulted in wrongful prosecution, researchers began investigating possible false memories (Loftus, et al) – in which "repressed" memories often turned out to be implanted memories – outright fabrications.

Now research has proven out Loftus' claim that many traumatic memories are the result of therapy rather than actual events. The study quoted in this article demonstrates that rather than easily repressed, traumatic memories – especially highly emotional memories containing a visual element – can be VERY difficult to forget – and let go of.

According to the study's lead author, Keith Payne, an assistant professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, painful, emotional memories that people would most like to forget may be the toughest to leave behind, especially when memories are created through visual cues.

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“There are reasons to believe that the brain has evolved mechanisms to detect things in the environment that signal threat. One of those signals is a look of fear,” David Zald, associate professor of psychology and a co-author of the new study, said. “We believe that the brain can detect certain cues even before we are aware of them, so that we can direct our attention to potentially threatening situations in our environment.”

Researchers set out to determine if we become aware of fearful, neutral or happy expressions at the same speed, or if one of these expressions reaches our awareness faster than the others.

The team found that subjects became aware of faces that had fearful expressions before neutral or happy faces. They believe a brain area called the amygdala, part of the emotions-processing limbic system, shortcuts the normal brain pathway for processing visual images.

“The amygdala receives information before it goes to the cortex, which is where most visual information goes first. We think the amygdala has some crude ability to process stimuli and that it can cue some other visual areas to what they need to focus on,” Zald said.

Zald and his colleagues believe the eyes of the fearful face play a key role.

“Fearful eyes are a particular shape, where you get more of the whites of the eye showing,” he said.”That may be the sort of simple feature that the amygdala can pick up on, because it’s only getting a fairly crude representation. That fearful eye may be something that’s relatively hardwired in there.”

“We are interested in now exploring what this means for behavior,” Yang said. “Since these expressions are being processed without our awareness, do they affect our behavior and our decision making? If so, how?”

The research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health. Blake and Zald are Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development investigators. Randolph Blake, Centennial Professor of Psychology, and Eunice Yang, doctoral student, were co-authors of the study, which appeared in the November 2007 issue of Emotion.

Memories – such fleeting things sometimes. And yet, other memories seem to last and last – flush with details. Researchers at Duke University led by neuroscientist Roberto Cabeza, Ph.D. have discovered that information retrieved from memory is simultaneously processed in two specific regions of the brain, each of which focuses on a different aspect of a past event. The medial temporal lobe (MTL), located at the base of the brain, focuses on specific facts about the event. The frontal parietal network (FPN), located at the top of the brain, is more likely to process the global gist of the event.

What does this mean for us "ordinary folks?"

It's back to the eyes. When you move your eyes, you tend to focus attention in your brain in an opposite direction. For example, when you look to the left, you tend to activate right hemisphere areas of your brain; when you look up, you tend to focus attention on lower brain areas, etc. It is as though you have a line-of-sight fulcrum inside your head with the fulcrum center-point in the very center of your brain (at eye level, of course). When you swing your gaze to the left, the other end of the fulcrum swings right, etc.

Consider this process to fully recall a memory:

First, look down, activating the FPN to get the gist of the memory. Cast your eyes side to side while looking downward to gain further information from the cerebral hemispheres associated with the FPN. When you feel ready to recall the details of that memory, swing your eyes upward and side-to-side. The upward gaze will tend to activate the MTL portion of your brain while the side-to-side action will tend to activate right and left hemispheres associated with the MTL.

Now, one more thing…

When you access a brain region, it wants something to DO. I recommend that you consider blinking – it's a simple and easy thing to do that creates huge fluctuations in light (from all to nothing and back). What you'll probably find is that by looking up and blinking, you'll activate the details-oriented MTL – and you'll stop blinking automatically as the details of a memory come to mind. Same goes for the FPN. And my guess is that if someone were to be looking at your eyes while you do this, they'd see small but perceptible jumps in the size of your pupils as memory gist and details come to mind.

Perhaps someday some curious scientist will seek to investigate my theory that one can consciously access memory aspects better with eye movement and blinking. Rapid Eye Technicians and their clients are already aware of the connection between eye movement, blinking, and memory – and the discharge of emotional energy tied up in certain types of memories.

Although some consider Rapid Eye Technology to be a spiritual process, the movement and blinking of the eyes is a physical aspect of a psychological process of memory that can be personally experienced by anyone – and when done in a controlled fashion can enhance memory while separating memories from their emotional charge. Further, the basic processes and techniques of Rapid Eye Technology take advantage of the connection between physical, emotional, and mental aspects of memory.

Directing a person’s eye movements or attention in specific patterns can also aid in solving complex problems.

A new study appearing in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, is the first to show that a person’s ability to solve a problem can be influenced by how he or she moves.

“Our manipulation [of the body] is changing the way people think,” said University of Illinois psychology professor Alejandro Lleras, who along with Vanderbilt University postdoctoral researcher Laura Thomas, conducted the study. “In other words, by directing the way people move their bodies, we are – unbeknownst to them - directing the way they think about the problem.”

“The results are interesting both because body motion can affect higher order thought, the complex thinking needed to solve complicated problems, and because this effect occurs even when someone else is directing the movements of the person trying to solve the problem,” Lleras said.

According to Lleras, this type of consciousness, “embodied cognition,” describes the link between body and mind in a new and insightful way.

“People tend to think that their mind lives in their brain, dealing in conceptual abstractions, very much disconnected from the body,” he said. “This emerging research is fascinating because it is demonstrating how your body is a part of your mind in a powerful way. The way you think is affected by your body and, in fact, we can use our bodies to help us think.”

In one experiment dealing with a problem in knot tying, subjects were more successful if they swung their arms than if they stretched their arms. “By making you swing your arms in a particular way, we’re activating a part of your brain that deals with swinging motions,” Lleras said. “That sort of activity in your brain then unconsciously leads you to think about that type of motion when you’re trying to solve the [knot tying] problem.”

According to Llares, previous studies have demonstrated that body movement can assist in learning and memory or can change a person’s perceptions or attitudes toward information.

Other studies by Lleras and his colleagues have shown that directing a person’s eye movements or attention in specific patterns can also aid in solving complex problems. This is the first study to show that directed movements of the body can, outside of conscious awareness, guide higher-order cognitive processing, he said.

“We view this as a really important new window into understanding the complexity of human thought,” Lleras said. “I guess another take-home message is this: If you are stuck trying to solve a problem, take a break. Go do something else. This will ensure that the next time you think about that problem you will literally approach it with a different mind. And that may help!”

Thomas and Lleras’ article in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review is titled “Swinging Into Thought: Directed Movement Guides Insight in Problem Solving.“