These are actual photos taken by the lifeblogging app used by people in the study. Participants were later shown these photos while in the fMRI and asked to recall the memories associated with the pictures.
Credit: Per Sederberg
For the first time, scientists have seen evidence of where the brain records the time and place of real-life memories.
Results showed that the similarity of the brain activation patterns when memories were recalled was an indicator of the breadth of space and time between the actual events.
Participants in the Ohio State University study wore a smartphone around their neck with an app that took random photos for a month. Later, when the participants relived memories related to those photos in an fMRI scanner, researchers found that a part of the brain’s hippocampus stores information about where and when […]
As a therapist, I would be interested to see the role of emotions (positive, negative, intensity) in memory storage.
Also, re:sleep disorders: disrupted sleep is viewed as a common “effect” of PTSD/c-PTSD. As research shows sleep consolidates memory, I wonder if sleep disruption may rather &/or additionally be a (not-so- conscious?) coping mechanism by people plagued by unmanageable, as-yet-unhealed memories? (Perhaps more obvious with nightmares).