Emotions Can 'Hangover' and Bias Our Future Memories
Emotions are powerful influences in our lives. Some people feel their impact more that others. Emotions can linger into the future as a sort of hangover, even when the stimulus that brought on an experience has passed.
Our emotional experiences can "hangover" as physiological and internal brain states, despite the emotional event having ended. This emotional induction effects how we view, act and bias our memory and recollection of events.
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A study published in Nature Neuroscience talks about this ability of our future memories to be affected by emotional states. It was previously known that emotional arousal can produce lasting vivid memories, but not whether emotion enhances memory formation. Researchers set out to assess if exposure to such emotional stimulus would bias future brain activity.
Lila Davachi, an associate professor in NYU's Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science and senior author of the study, further explained:
"How we remember events is not just a consequence of the external world we experience, but is also strongly influenced by our internal states—and these internal states can persist and color future experiences"
Emotional experiences have been known to be better remembered than non-emotional experiences. This new study demonstrates non-emotional experiences following emotional ones were also better remembered. We don't just remember what happens because of what happens, but remember it more or less than other things based on how it makes us feel.
Our emotions carry over into our future decisions and behavior, sometimes for better, and sometimes for the worse as hindering our ability to think clearly, or even get us to react in ways that are influenced from those past experiences and not honestly assess the present condition.
In the study, people viewed a series of scenes containing emotional content. After 10 to 30 minutes, one of the group of participants viewed non-emotional ordinary scenes, followed by emotional ones again. Another group did the opposite, viewing non-emotional scenes first and then emotional ones. Both groups of subjects had their brain activity and physiological arousal measured with an fMRI. Memory tests of viewing the images were administered six hours later to see accuracy of various memories recalled.
Those who experienced emotions from the emotion-stimulating images first before the non-emotional images had better long-term memory recall of emotionally-neutral images shown later, compared to those who were not exposed to emotional imagery beforehand. When an emotional stimulus is provided with emotions being experienced, the brain pays more attention to what comes after.
The study concludes that our emotional experiences and the brain states that are associated with them are carried over for 20 to 30 minutes and influence the way we process and remember experiences that are not emotional. Our own experience and the emotions we have associated with that experience can persist in time and bias how we encode and recollect new or unrelated information. The emotional state makes things more salient to us, to have more weight and importance.
This begs the question if it's better to be in an emotionally positive or emotionally negative state to study or remember certain information. My suspicion is that this salient recollection is for experience, and not specifically information or knowledge itself like for studying or learning. Or at least the negative emotional state would not be as beneficial to one's ability to remember information or knowledge compared to a positive emotional state.
Maybe I'm wrong. What do you think? Have you noticed you're able to better remember information if you are in a positive, negative or neutral emotional state?
With all the stress in life, the chaos of our times, maybe people have a harder time thinking because of this. Could this play a part in the short-term memory of forgetting what's going on in the world and making connections, keeping people focused on seeking out positive experiences and avoiding to face the dark negative of the world? Our memory can be biased to forgetting things that make us feel negatively, as we seek to feel positively.
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
References: Is there such a thing as an emotional hangover? Researchers find that there is | Emotional brain states carry over and enhance future memory formation
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there's well known related thing to this experiment, if you do something every day it becomes a routine, if you drive your car to a job every day then you will not remember each ride after certain amount of time, if some one would ask you what you did at nine a.m. one year ago then you would assume that you were driving your car to your job at that time, but you wouldn't actually remember it, if one day on the way to your job asteroid suddenly falls then you will remember this ride for the rest of your life with details what happened before and after asteroid fell. As I understood this experiment is telling us that you will remember better what happened this day after asteroid fell than what happened before asteroid fell. Logically it makes sense because you would start to pay much more attention to everything after dramatic events, everything suddenly have more meaning to you.
But there is another aspect too. Sometimes I remember very old events out of nowhere in vivid details. When one thing starts I keep remembering a whole lot of past experiences mostly related to location or person but not that related to the time. Memory recall could even be sort of a flow state we can tap into and control. I know that meditation helps in this aspect from my personal experiences. I've seen te best results from Ānāpānasati Meditation
Yup, good point, the emotional state makes us more aware. I think it's a survival component too ;)
As the technology advances, I watch more and more of these brain studies come out. Many of them are fascinating; many bring new information to light. We're learning...
I often end up back at a core question — as I did, reading this — of whether our biology is actually capable of keeping up with the speed of our technological advance.
We take the fundamental concept that an organism adapts to its environment; and humans are an organism. We adapt. But our technological changes are moving SO fast... can our brains actually keep up? Or are we getting to the point where technological advances are starting to register as "trauma" to our brains?
So, in reference to your post and the article... my ability to remember (or not) stuff is less related to emotional/non-emotional states than to simply the amount of data that's inbound. Sometimes my brain feels like a hard drive in desperate need of being defragged. I can't remember a freakin' thing!
Now, another variable might be that I'm in my 50's, so the flexibility of my neural net is less than it once was. Makes me wonder about the age group of the people in the studies. We're they college students? Older? A mix? Does it even matter... I don't know.
But I do enjoy taking my brain out and playing with it!
Hehe, yeah sometime I am brain dead for a bit of a day, and can't do much work from the mind. Maybe when one is older it's more prevalent ;) The brain is said to start shrinking after the age of 30...
About the info overload being trauma, it might be a minor form related to overwhelming input... but its not like physical o other psychological trauma of great magnitude ;)
For sure, when I have something on my mind or a big decision to try and make, and I’m feeling less positive, it has a huge weight on my mind. In these times It’s almost like my mind just cannot shut off and is continually running at a much faster rate than my body, and it becomes increasingly difficult to ‘shut off’ and unwind. It makes it so much harder to even think about normal day to day things let alone remember information and learned knowledge,
I also find that today as we have access to everything that’s ever been learned at our fingertips on our phones, this means our memory and brain layout is changing... I feel anyone (not everyone) born in he last 80s and upwards has this new way of thinking, which is almost, not to think! People used to have to read books and search for information rather than instantly get it only to forget one moment later
There is certainly ‘smart phone brain’ where many people no longer remember things because they can simply just access it via a quick search. I feel like this is an intended consequence; when people can’t remember things they don’t remember history. They then just search and we all know that the most popular results aren’t what actually happens and are just a filtered version.
Wow yea very good point!
That's probably why old people usually remember every weird little detail, peoples names and dates of all the historical events etc. Since we don't have to remember anything, we don't even try to.
Yeah to an extent. You know what people in their 20’s-40’s remember a lot of? Useless sports history and stats. This drives me insane! When they remember some game and it’s highlights from the 80’s or 90’s but can’t tell you if we are ruining countries in the Middle East we aren’t even at ‘war’ with, or Africa.
That's true. Although I don't remember sports facts either.....
Yes, we used to read more. Now we just search for things and don't bother remembering much as we can always go search. We just remember the entertainment that makes us "feel-good".
Off the top of my head, I would say it's the actual opposite of this.
If you think about it from a biological survival perspective, it's the negative experiences that are essential to be remembered - for survival.
Our bodies tend to work on negative feedback loops, not positive ones.
Remembering positive emotional states is nice, but not survival.
Remembering negative one most definitely are 'survival memories'.
I'm on my first coffee of the morning, so feel free to blow my hypothesis to bits! lol
But information or knowledge you read or watch. If you are in a positive emotional state, your more inclined to receptive to info. whereas being in a negative emotional state you would be less inclined to receive info or remember it.
For survival situations, yes, as you describe. But receiving info isn't a survival scenario ;)
I would say that the mechanism of 'writing them to hard drive' is motivated by survival.
(it would never get 'written to hard drive', if there was no survival merit to ever learn..)
If that is the case, I would see the negative (live or die states), to be the heaviest imprinted - ergo a clearer memory of what has been learned.
thing of how quick a child learns that putting your hand in a fire is a not good idea, and how long it takes to learn.... colors... or something...
The survival mode leaves a harder imprint.
I think that it’s more tagged to negative emotions. There are both positive emotions associated and negative but I think the negative ones are more prevalent in our memory. Seems to me it related to the fight or flight mechanism built into our bodies; negative emotions can trigger these types of responses. Think of 9/11, most people in their late 20’s and older know where they were when 9/11 happened, know what was happening. I remember exactly where I was, what I was doing, my dad yelling that he needed the TV.
There are great positive emotions that I remember as well of course but I remember fewer of these as vividly as the negative ones.
Yes, that's for regular memory of experiences. I was making a case about learning information or knowledge, and how negative emotional states make us less receptive to it. It's a bit different ;)
This expects why I can remember very traumatic experiences from my childhood and forget about a course I just read yesterday. I always believed in the potency of our emotions as humans, as it influences not just memories but decisions.
As regards learning I think it plays a vital role and most time I try to be in the same emotional state I was during a lecture to recall some of the details. Usually, fun classes are easier to remember than boring ones because the lecturer engages our emotions positively. So you can say it counts--our emotions are engaged in our learning process and they can facilitate memory recollection.
That's a good example that demonstrates this research. Thanks for bringing it up ;) Positive emotions help us take in new information that might otherwise be less impactful and less remembered ;)
maybe a better perspective is one of worthwhile memories. when we do something that harnesses the emotional response, it creates lasting impressions. these impressions are like caches in our brain. the allow instant recall and also defer to long term storage.
there are several times when we are able to recall even when there has been no impression made. i guess you call it neutral or subliminal memory. we tend to forget positive things very quickly while we remember negative things for a long time.
Yes, for emotional experiences, positive is more forgotten compared to negative experiences, but this study wasn't about that. It was about what comes after the emotional experience, and remembering that info that comes after.
When we drive our life with too much emotional moods then for sure our life decisions will impact and will going to give negatives and positives too, but emotional decisions falls at negative sides many times. When we face emotional events then for sure that effect will stay with us for long term because that hits us into deepest levels so it's impossible to forget those instances where we felt heartbreak and that emotional essence always born in our thoughts whenever we tend to forget it.
No matter what and no matter what others think but we are mystery and our overall creation is mystery and our brain is greatest tool and brain really works so organised way with collaboration of Subconscious mind and subconscious mind collects all 90% data and that's why dreams are effected by subconscious thinking because our subconscious mind works for 24/7 and it's greatest storage. We can say to someone that don't effect with anything but it's that simple? NO. If it would be simple then for sure we would live so much happily without any stress but in my opinion this Emotional State of mind is like an fitted expression and tool of thought in us.
Thanks for sharing this post with us and wishing you an great day. Stay blessed. 🙂
Yeah, negative emotions can act as trauma and haunt us for years. Learning to let go is important ;)
Absolutely true. 🙂
Very interesting article.
One of the things that helped me control my emotions is the use of TM or Transcendental Meditation. And while technically, I cannot use that term as it is copyrighted, there are loads of classes and videos to teach mantra meditation aka mindfullness.
Of course if you are a skeptic about all this, all I ask is that you try it our for 2 weeks, 20 minutes a day, and see if you are not able to better control your emotions.
A lot of very high profile people use this technique to help them in their careers. Of note are Jerry Seinfeld, Clint Eastwood, and director David Lynch. In fact it was through a David Lynch Foundation event teamed with Operation Warrior Wellness that offered me the avenues to learn the technique. And today, you can find a swath of people teaching the basics online for free.
How this relates to memory is that, I am able remember things more clearly these days. And interestingly, the memories are not devoid of emotions. In fact, I can recall some things in such clarity, I will tear up. But, with that information stored in my head, using the mantra meditation allows me to make more logical decisions based on those feelings, than to simply react spontaneously. Seems a bit counter-intuitive.
And I also realize I am opening myself up here to a lot of criticism. But, again, all I have to say is try it. (granted, there are some major jackasses out there. So if it's a Corey Goode type telling you meditation will let you talk to big blue bird people from outer space, then you know you found the wrong instructor. Not kidding! There really is a guy out there with wildly unverifiable stories like that. More than one person actually.).
Also, I used to have an emotional block with math. As a 3 year old child, I witnessed violence on someone over math. It was my sister, and she was being yelled at by my father over a math problem she got wrong. And it got physical.
And, I was never good at math in high school or later in college. But, after I started meditating, (coming up on 9 years this September), I went back to college under the VA's Vocational Rehab program.
At one point, I was studying to get into a masters program. And that meant taking a GRE test. It was intimidating as the math portion included Algebra, Trig, and geometry. I was always good with geometry. But the other 2 subjects forced me to the Math Lab.
After about 2 weeks, I began to get every problem in front of me correct. The instructor who ran the lab told me never saw anyone pick it up so quickly. And while I never ended up taking the GRE or going for a masters, I am very happy that I found out the only thing holding me back from math mastery was an emotion, not my capacity for number crunching.
Hope that helps!
Also, I think it is interesting to note that Vulcans from Star Trek lore, all practice meditation. And as their primary characteristic is that they refrain from expressing emotion, I feel its more than a coincidence that Gene Roddenberry included them in his series.
@krnel emotions is very amazing gift of God, because everything which we feel is depends on emotions. Thank you for share this useful information.