A traumatic event can really mess with your brain. But the ability to recall such an experience in the future could be useful, even lifesaving, according to an article in today’s Washington Post.
The recovered brain knows to red-tag the notes and retrieve them quickly when needed. In fact, it may retrieve them before you know you even need them, according to Staci Gruber, associate director of the cognitive neuroimaging lab at McLean Hospital, part of Harvard Medical School. The brain frequently senses danger before the individual sees anything potentially dangerous, Gruber says. The individual can then act quickly to escape the danger or minimize its effect.
Not surprisingly, brain plasticity plays a big role here. And that’s a good thing, since the stress of trauma and recalling it can cause the brain to manufacture hormones that kills cells that convert short-term to long-term memories.
You might think it’d be OK to forget such a terrible memory. After all, recalling a trauma over and over can release more of those cell-killing hormones. But erasing all traces of the traumatic event would be throwing away any learning along with the memory.
The trick is to set it up so any re-experiencing happens in a safe, calm environment.
Therapy, more than drugs, helps people recover from PTSD, says Dianne Bradford, professor in the psychiatry department at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta. And it turns out, according to (research psychiatrist Norman) Doidge, that all the conventional therapies help rewire the brain by encouraging patients to re-experience bits of the earlier trauma in a safe environment. Research shows that the hippocampus can grow new cells and long-term memory can take shape to be recalled when necessary.
That’s evidently what happened with Liviu Librescu, the holocaust survivor and heroic Virginia Tech engineering professor who helped students escape last week’s massacre. The gunman later killed Librescu.
He was a person whose memories served him well: He must have realized quickly “that sometimes people with evil intent come to your door with a gun, and you have to be prepared for that,” Doidge said.