Sinner and Panatta in the Davis Cup, Italy-Germany 2006: this is why some events remain indelible

What makes the victories of the Azzurri indelible in our brain, from the one in
Sinner's Davis Cup and companions from last month to that of Panatta from 47 years agoup to that of Italy-Germany at the 2006 World Cup? Many studies indicate that you remember with a strong emotional impact how these are fixed better than the others in the centers of the so-called emotional memory preserved in
'amygdala
and in the
hippocampus
where they remain for years, sometimes forever as happens for example with the birth of a child.

Electrical frequency and emotional words

In January a research published in Nature Human Behavior New York researchers led by Joshua Jacobs of Columbia University indicated that there is a way to know if this mnemonic anchoring occurs: when the electroencephalographic activity of these two brain areas is between 30 and 180 Hertz. Having to remember words that researchers have classified as emotional words, for example knife or dog, the electrical activity of the two areas presents these frequencies, while for defined neutral terms such as chair, for example, they are missing, demonstrating that the emotional coloring that we also give to trivial things determines the strength of the memory.

Daily memory and oblivion

The so-called daily memory incorporates the
memory and oblivion
because it involves the coding, storage and deletion of the memory for any event of the day, which is retained for some time, but is then usually forgotten. Why do we remember some things, but not others? Such selectivity a positive characteristic of memory that protects us from having to remember every detail of daily events for a long time, making us conserve only what matters.

Flash memory

Memory shifts gears and becomes stronger when we come across a unexpected event, which is not so rare and also causes the so-called penumbra of retention for other proximal memories that would normally be quickly forgotten. This is the so-called flash memory which is activated in association with a surprising or shocking event which also carries with it the memory, in itself of little significance, of what happened in temporal proximity to the novel event. A classic example there Twin Towers tragedy: Almost everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news, although some studies say that incidental memories of that day are not always error-free.

Blue memories: the blue core

Another study just published in PNAS has discovered how emotionally charged memories such as Sofia Goggia's victory in the San Moritz ski world cup are triggered in the amygdala and hippocampus. This was discovered by researchers at the University of Edinburgh directed by Richard Morris, the creator of the aquatic labyrinth that bears his name and used throughout the world to study the murine brain. Scottish researchers published a study in PNAS according to which l'switch of these memories a small center located bilaterally in the brain stem roughly at the junction between the skull and neck called nblue ucleus from Latin locus coeruleus as the French anatomist Flix Vicq-d'Azyr defined it in 1784, who noticed it for blue pigmentation of its nerve cells. But beyond the casual coincidence between the color of the shirts of our champions and that of the cells of this cerebral nucleus, what counts is its importance in the memories of what surprises us: in fact, it has always been the blue nucleus that sends to our emotional memory other impactful and less happy memories such as that of the September 11 attack or Kennedy's assassination. In all mammals the blue locus is considered an important hub of reorganization and sorting of information both ascending and descending nerves and in addition to the amygdala and hypothalamus, it has connections with practically every area of ​​the nervous system.

Norepinephrine

So far compared to a motor alarm system ready to trigger a fight or flight reaction in the face of danger, This locus contains over half of the norepinephrine in the entire central nervous system. This neurotransmitter, calledaction and stress, at the basis of the so-called fight or flight reaction, that is, acting by fighting if the opponent is within our reach, or by fleeing if we find ourselves in front of a lion. And, as a study by MIT researchers directed by Mriganka Sur demonstrated this summer in Nature, it is precisely the norepinephrine of the coeruleus that it helps to focus the memory on an unexpected event and make it fixed in memory.

Post-traumatic disorder

The overload of these mechanisms also determines the so-called dpost-traumatic stress disorder of which the victims are war veterans or survivors of serious road accidents or terrorist attacks who have intrusive thoughts for a long time in which the memory of the serious event they suffered never goes away and returns to reoccur with such intensity as to profoundly undermine the quality of life.

Dementia

The opposite situation is memory loss, the serious personal and social consequences of which are evident above all in the ever-growing dementia disorders throughout the world. Studies like this can help to understand the mechanisms that regulate memory and manage what needs to be remembered rather than forgotten – comments the President of the Italian Society of Neurology Prof. Alessandro Padovani of the University of Brescia – Interpreting these processes can help to the many patients today at risk of developing memory pathologies. Those who suffer from pathologies such as MCI, an acronym for mild cognitive impairment, will benefit mild cognitive impairment commonly called pathological forgetfulness and above all of the much more devastating Alzheimer's disease to which last year the well-known geriatrician Marco Trabucchi dedicated a book entitled Help me to remember.

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