eGuide Archives: Memory The Child Protection eGuide An electronic publication of Survivors And Victims Empowered Volume 2, Issue 24 June 18, 2009 Tip of the Week: Tip of the week:Do you have student who has difficulty studying and remember things? Virginia Tech's Cook Counseling Center offers these tips for improving concentration and memory when studying. VA Tech tips on memory here  Other Resources: APA on learning here APA Monitor story here ISSTD dissociation Memory How memory works Memory functions through three steps: Acquisition, Consolidation and Retrieval. Intelihealth link here Acquisition. Before you can remember something, you first must learn the information. This is called acquisition. This acquired information is then put into temporary nerve-cell pathways in the brain. These pathways are where you store short-term memory. Consolidation. In order for something to be placed in long-term memory, the nerve pathways have to be strengthened and reinforced. This process, called consolidation, can take weeks or even months. There are several factors that affect whether or not information will be put into long-term memory. For example, you are more likely to retain information if it relates to pre-existing memories or somehow stimulates you emotionally. Also, it doesn't hurt to have a good night's sleep, as this too helps you retain information. Retrieval. When people retrieve information, they are literally "recalling" it from the nerve pathways. The brain reactivates a particular pathway, and information is remembered. This process can be fast or slow, depending on how familiar you are with the information and how well you learned it in the first place. Scientists performing experimental brain surgery on a man aged 50 have stumbled across a mechanism that could unlock how memory works. The Independent.uk story here The accidental breakthrough came during an experiment originally intended to suppress the obese man's appetite, using the increasingly successful technique of deep-brain stimulation. eNewsletter/vol6_iss9 Stress and memory Researchers using functional MRI (fMRI) have determined that the circuitry in the area of the brain responsible for suppressing memory is dysfunctional in patients suffering from stress-related psychiatric disorders. Results of the study were recently presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). esciencenews story here "For patients with major depression and other stress-related disorders, traumatic memories are a source of anxiety," said Nivedita Agarwal, M.D., radiology resident at the University of Udine in Italy, where the study is being conducted, and research fellow at the Brain Imaging Center of McLean Hospital, Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "Because traumatic memories are not adequately suppressed by the brain, they continue to interfere with the patient's life." Dr. Agarwal and colleagues used brain fMRI to explore alterations in the neural circuitry that links the prefrontal cortex to the hippocampus, while study participants performed a memory task. Participants included 11 patients with major depression, 13 with generalized anxiety disorder, nine with panic attack disorders, five with borderline personality disorder and 21 healthy individuals. All patients reported suffering varying degrees of stressful traumatic events, such as sexual or physical abuse, difficult relationships or "mobbing"-a type of bullying or harassment-at some point in their lives. Repressed Memory Unwanted memories can be driven from awareness, according to a team of researchers who say they have identified a brain circuit that springs into action when people deliberately try to forget something. New York Times news story here The findings, published in the January 2004 journal Science, strengthen the theory that painful memories can be repressed by burying them in the subconscious, the researchers say. Children's memories more factually accurate than adults The U.S. legal system has long assumed that all testimony is not equally credible, that some witnesses are more reliable than others. In tough cases with child witnesses, it assumes adult witnesses to be more reliable. But what if the legal system had it wrong? physorg.com news story here Researchers Valerie Reyna, human development professor, and Chuck Brainerd, human development and law school professor - both from Cornell University - argue that like the two-headed Roman god Janus, memory is of two minds - that is, memories are captured and recorded separately and differently in two distinct parts of the mind. They say children depend more heavily on a part of the mind that records, "what actually happened," while adults depend more on another part of the mind that records, "the meaning of what happened." As a result, they say, adults are more susceptible to false memories, which can be extremely problematic in court cases. Reyna's and Brainerd's research, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), sparked more than 30 follow-up memory studies (many also funded by NSF), which the researchers review in an issue of Psychological Bulletin. This research shows that meaning-based memories are largely responsible for false memories, especially in adult witnesses. Because the ability to extract meaning from experience develops slowly, children are less likely to produce these false memories than adults, and are more likely to give accurate testimony when properly questioned. The finding is counterintuitive; it doesn't square with current legal tenets, and may have important implications for legal proceedings. Reminder of the week: This is the time of year when many teens will have unsupervised time on their hands, or will be spending time with people they don't see often. If your family is home for the holidays, especially if you are working when they are home from school, pay close attention to who they are spending time with and what they are doing. If you're travelling to see extended family, look for warning signs of potential drug and alcohol use among peers. In either case, discuss these issues with teens and tweens now, before they are exposed to potential problems. (See more about drugs and alcohol at eGuide/drugs and alcohol)

© 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010,2011 Survivors And Victims Empowered, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
No part of this publication may be reprinted without permission unless used in an article reviewing this publication. The organizations listed within this publication are not necessarily endorsed by Survivors And Victims Empowered.

Survivors And Victims Empowered
38 Doe Run Road, Suite 250
Manheim, PA 17545


Correspondence should continue to be addressed to:
P. O. Box 8875
Lancaster, PA 17604-8875