few years ago I had a fight with a group of friends who thought I should go with for the rest of my life, but as time passes and I, for my part, I tried to forget, going out with other friends. Forgetting is not at all easy. For example, last night I found some old photos of these friends, the tears were released unconditionally and the emotions took precedence over rationality, telling me that it was already past.
Because the pain of the past haunts us too often and with pleasure in this? Is there a solution to the fear of the pain of remembering or forgetting?
Maria Grazia Maria Grazia
Cara,
The Austrian-American Erich R. Kandel took the 2000 Nobel prize for medicine and neuroscience for his studies on memory and learning. Thanks to him, today, we know that the mechanisms of memory are related to complex systems of regulation of cellular activity, mainly based on protein phosphorylation.
In the human brain there are billions of nerve cells that are interconnected through a complex network of processes. The message is sent from one nerve cell to another through chemical messengers and "communication" takes place at specific points of contact called synapses. Eric Kandel has focused its pioneering research on slow synaptic transmission, which is a particular type of transmission signals between nerve cells, making it possible to develop new drugs. But above all, his research on synaptic plasticity have identified the cellular mechanisms, molecular and genetic memory.
neurons, in certain situations, the synapses can change: this shows their plasticity. When
learning and memory behavior, an event, a text, it tracks imprinted in a specific area of \u200b\u200bour brain. Kandel's argument was that the memory is the result of micro-physical modifications of synapses. The difficulty of the research was to collect those infinitesimal changes between the billions of synapses that make up the human brain.
Here his intuition to study the Aplysia californica, a marine snail of the island of Catalina.
dell'Aplysia neurons are similar to ours and its electrical signals that neurons send to each other, absolutely identical to those of man. Although gastropod in question has a nervous system composed of only twenty thousand neurons, compared with 11 to 100 billion of the human brain. Thanks to his experiments with Aplysia, he realized that a simple reflex retraction of its respiratory organ (gill and siphon) can be modified in two ways: by raising or habit. He also proved that these reflexes are the behavioral stimulation caused by the plasticity of the synapse: therefore, that memory comes in the synapse.
Today, we are aware that within the sensory neuron activates a gene called CREB, which determines the synthesis of proteins that change more or less persistent in the synapse by generating the two possible forms of memory: a transient short- term and a long-term or long term. This confirmed his theory that the memory had an organic explanation.
Eric Kandel says that memory is crucial in mental processes and the psychoanalytic approach, especially because we are who we are because of what we remember of our lives.
Not even the person most icy and imperturbable ne è immune. Sogni e ricordi sono l’unico laccio tenace che ci tiene stretti al futuro e al passato: i mattoni portanti della nostra vita. Cosa sarebbe l’esistenza senza l’eccitante propulsione del sogno e del desiderio e senza l’educativo bagaglio della memoria? Il mosaico di noi stessi si è autocostruito con le preziose tessere dei ricordi che disegnano il DNA del nostro vissuto, del nostro carattere, del nostro comportamento. L’io-uomo è quello che ha imparato ad essere con l’apprendimento, con l’interesse, con lo stimolo che la "memoria" ha metabolizzato in una personalità unica e distinta da tutte le altre. Un profumo, un sapore, una musica, una voce, possono riaccendere istantaneamente the child who we were, the adolescent, the adult in the film sequence of our past. They can dive into the folds of layered memories with similar feelings, without interruption, eliminating the time. The same stimulus triggers the reflex of the same emotion, confirming our identity as innate and built. This is the memory. Sensory memory. The memory that evokes and strengthens. The memory that makes us who we are.
But memory, as well as emotional, it is also functional. It stands out as a memory associated with learning and recall of information (declarative memory) from a memory of actions (procedural memory) which is nel saper fare una determinata cosa per averla già fatta altre volte. Dal punto di vista scientifico, le classificazioni più accreditate concordano nel suddividere la memoria in: sensoriale, cioè il processo percettivo in cui le informazioni provenienti dagli organi di senso vengono riconosciute; a breve termine, che trattiene un numero limitato di informazioni per un breve periodo di tempo (pochi secondi) e comporta l’ attivazione elettrica di alcuni neuroni , senza modificazioni durature; a lungo termine, grazie alla quale le informazioni vengono trattenute per un periodo di tempo più lungo. Poi, parte delle informazioni si perde, parte si conferma e diviene memoria permanente. Segue così una fase di consolidamento con la quale l’informazione saved from oblivion and becomes resistant to interference with other information. The long-term memory involves the creation of new connections between neurons in the brain, by activating the production of specific proteins and RNA. Then there is the so-called - emotional memory - that can be identified with the unconscious, which remains etched in the experiences "favorite" from our mind that has a selective capacity able to avoid the weight of useless information. The memory of the language, through which we remember vocabulary and grammatical rules that allow you to communicate and express ourselves properly. And yet, the memory of the environment and society: work, family, relationships with others. The memory, despite being a dynamic process, may identify themselves as a sort of archive where memories are somehow put in order and classified. The "key" with which the information is located will also be one that will allow access to the archive at the time of retrieval.
Joseph LeDoux, a leader of a group of researchers from the Centre for Neuroscience in New York has recently developed a drug that can eliminate some memories from a selective memory of rats, without affecting the others, or are able to work on the mechanism, regulating the transfer of memories from short-term memory to long term, gives birth permanent memories. This process, known as reconsolidation, can be altered or terminated with appropriate medications, avoiding a selective formation of specific memories, without affecting the others. The researchers induced rats to fear two different sounds were imposed on them while facendoglieli feel an electric shock. They then administered to half of the animals, the U0126, a chemical known to cause amnesia, while the mice were again heard the sounds, in an attempt to resurface the unpleasant memory. The next day, were made to hear the same noises mice, but those treated with U0126 did not seem to have more "memory" of that fear, while others associated the noise with the unpleasant memory of the shock. According to the researchers, the fear of the sound (and therefore experience negative) are not consolidated into the permanent memory in rats "treated" with the U0126. According to LeDoux
in this process, the amygdala plays a key role: it is an area of \u200b\u200bthe brain where, during the formation of an unpleasant memory, you may notice a significant increase in communication between neurons. In rats treated with the drug the number of these neuronal connections was very low: this indicates a real memory erasing painful.
The search for the American team however, is not the first of its kind: in 2004 a group of Cambridge scientists had hypothesized to affect the process of reconsolidation of memories to take action on the root problems such as drug and alcohol addictions, phobias and recurrent stress syndrome. According to British researchers the memory undergoes reconsolidation every time they made the memories emerge, as in a file that is opened and then saved. With appropriate medication should be possible to interrupt this process by preventing the "save file", thus erasing the unpleasant memory.
is clear that this type of research should open the debate on several ethical issues: whether the psychological part of being human is also the fruit of experience, the selective cancellation of unpleasant memories could not possibly turn us into smiling automatons, incapable of learning from negative events and thus to improve? How could a man survive without the protection offered by fears? Against this type of study has also openly sided Bioethics Committee of the White House, according to which change the contents of our memory is equivalent to changing our personality.
Proponents of the "lifting" chemical, capable of making us live, at least in theory, happier and less stressed, however, are numerous. Roger Pitman, a psychiatrist at Harvard, argues that the erasure of memory is even a duty in all quei casi come gli attentati terroristici, gli stupri e gli incidenti, che rischiano di condizionare per tutta la vita l’emotività e la serenità di chi li subisce.
Un caro saluto
Alessandra
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