Why are memories attached to emotions so strong?

为什么与情感有关的记忆如此强烈？

上海译锐翻译     2020年7月14日     11:26 a.m.

Memories linked with strong emotions often become seared in the brain.

与强烈情感有关的记忆往往会烙印在脑海里。

Most people can remember where they were on 9/11, or what the weather was like on the day their first child was born. Memories about world events on Sept 10, or lunch last Tuesday, have long been erased.

绝大多数人都能够回忆起9.11事件发生时，自己在哪里，或者当自己第一个孩子出生时，当时的天气情况。有关9月10号世界发生了哪些大事或上周二午餐吃了什么的记忆却早已消失。

Why are memories attached to emotions so strong?

为什么与情感有关的记忆如此强烈？

"It makes sense we don't remember everything," says René Hen, PhD, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. "We have limited brain power. We only need to remember what's important for our future wellbeing."

哥伦比亚大学Vagelos 内外科医生学院精神病学和神经科学教授、博士René Hen表示：“我们不会记住所有的事情，这并不难理解。我们的大脑能力有限，我们只需要记住对于我们未来幸福重要的事情。”

Fear, in this context, is not just a momentary feeling but a learning experience critical to our survival. When a new situation makes us fearful, the brain records the details in our neurons to help us avoid similar situations in the future, or use appropriate caution.

因此，恐惧不仅是一种暂时的感觉，更是一种对于我们的生存至关重要的经验。当某个新情况让我们感到恐惧，大脑就会在我们的神经元中记录下细节，以帮助我们在未来避免类似情况再次出现或采取合适的预防手段。

What's still a mystery is why these memories, recorded by the brain's hippocampus, become so strong.

这些由大脑海马所记录的记忆为什么如此强烈仍然是一个未解之谜。

To find out, Hen and Jessica Jimenez, an MD/PhD student at Columbia, placed mice into new, frightening environments and recorded the activity of hippocampal neurons that reach out to the brain's fear center (the amygdala). The neurons' activity was also recorded a day later when the mice tried to retrieve memories of the experience.

为了解开谜团，哥伦比亚大学的两位医学博士Hen和Jessica Jimenez将老鼠放入某个新的、令其恐惧的环境中并记录下海马神经元（延伸到大脑的恐惧中心-杏仁体）的活动状态。一天之后，当老鼠试图回忆前一天的经历时，神经元的活动也被记录了下来。

Unsurprisingly, neurons that respond to the frightening environment send that information to the brain's fear center.

对恐惧环境做出反应的神经元将信息发送至大脑的恐惧中心，这并不让人感到意外。

"What was surprising was that these neurons were synchronized when the mouse later recalled the memory," Hen says.

让人感到惊讶的是，这些神经元会在老鼠随后回忆这段经历时，被同步化，Hen表示。

"We saw that it's the synchrony that is critical to establish the fear memory, and the greater the synchrony, the stronger the memory," Jimenez adds. "These are the types of mechanisms that explain why you remember salient events."

Jimenez补充表示：“我们发现，同步性是建立恐怖记忆的关键，同步性越大，记忆也就越强烈。这些不同类型的机制解释了为什么你会记住那些重大事件。”

How and when synchronization occurs is still unknown, but the answer could reveal the inner workings of the brain that create lifelong memories and lead to new treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder.

同步是如何以及何时发生的仍然属于未知状态，但是答案可能会揭开大脑在形成永生记忆时内部的工作机理并带来治疗创伤应激障碍的新方法。

"In people with PTSD, many similar events remind them of the original frightening situation," Hen says, "and it's possible that synchronization of their neurons has become too strong."

对于患有PTSD的人群而言，许多类似的事件都会让他们想起最初令人恐惧的场景，Hen表示，这可能是这类人群神经元的同步性变得过于强烈。

"We're really trying to dig into the mechanisms of how emotional memories form to find better treatments for people with PTSD and memory disorders in general."

我们正在尝试了解情感类记忆形成的机理，以找到更好的、治疗PTSD人群和记忆障碍的方法。

来源：科学日报    编辑：质控部