Why we
remember the past with great clarity
Many of us remember things from long ago as if they
happened yesterday, but at times we forget what we ate for dinner last night.
It's because how much something means to you actually influences how you see it as well as how vividly you can recall it later, according to a new study led by psychologists at the University of Toronto.
"We've discovered that we see things that are emotionally arousing with greater clarity than those that are more mundane," said Rebecca Todd, a postdoctoral fellow in U of T's Department of Psychology and lead author of the study.
"What's more, we found that how vividly we perceive something in the first place predicts how vividly we will remember it later on.
"We call this 'emotionally enhanced vividness' and it is like the flash of a flashbub that illuminates an event as it's captured for memory," Todd stated.
By studying brain activity, Todd, psychology professor Adam Anderson and other colleagues at U of T, along with researchers at the University of Manchester and the University of California, San Diego found that the part of the brain responsible for tagging the emotional or motivational importance of things according to one's own past experience - the amygdala - is more active when looking at images that are rated as vivid.
This increased activation in turn influences activity in both the visual cortex, enhancing activity linked to seeing objects, and in the posterior insula, a region that integrates sensations from the body.
"The experience of more vivid perception of emotionally important images seems to come from a combination of enhanced seeing and gut feeling driven by amygdala calculations of how emotionally arousing an event is," noted Todd.
The study was published recently in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Source:
www.timesofindia.com
31.08.2012
Soon, heart
pills with no side-effects
A major breakthrough by British scientists could lead to a new
cholesterol-busting pill without the potentially dangerous side effects of
statins.
Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have found that cholesterol levels are suppressed by the body's immune system as part of the process that fights off viral infections, the Daily Express reported.
"We have identified the immune hormone that does this. Statins are effective but crude drugs," Professor Peter Ghazal, leader of the research team, said.
"This discovery gives the ability to be a little more refined and by being a lot more subtle in how to control the production of cholesterol you can prevent a lot of these adverse side-effects," he noted.
Professor Ghazal hopes drugs to mimic the hormone that are just as effective as statins without their side effects may be an estimated five years away.
Statins have been hailed as a wonder drug for reducing the harmful blood fat that furs up arteries triggering tens of thousands of heart attacks and strokes that kill 150,000 people every year in Britain.
But there is evidence that some of the seven million people who take the daily heartpills can suffer side effects ranging from muscle aches and tummy upsets to a rare but serious lung disorder, as well as diabetes.
And for about one in four people statins do not reduce their cholesterol to a safe level because they do not work or patients cut the dose or stop taking them.
Yet experts believe the benefits of taking the tablets, that can cost as little as 4p a day, far outweigh any potential risks.
The new study is published in the journal Biochimie.
Source:
www.timesofindia.com
31.08.2012
Excellence is to do
a common thing in an uncommon way
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