We Now Know
It was in November 2011 while hiking in Clark Reservation that I suddenly remembered people and places I’d known when I was in elementary school. This wasn’t my first burst of recovered memory; years before I’d experienced frightening memories of what I thought was a hospitalization when I was eleven. I had tried to make sense of these thoughts, but no clear narrative emerged until I remembered what I remembered during my 2011 hike.
Two years prior to the “recovered memory” hike that shifted my consciousness of my own life experience, I suffered a concussion which led to a brain MRI. Medical staff asked me about the old brain injury revealed on the imagery. I knew nothing about a brain injury so I told doctors that, because I couldn’t remember it, it couldn’t have been too bad. I now know brain injury blocks memory of brain injury. Physical damage to the brain’s glial tissue, neurons, axons, dendrites, and long nerves such as tenth cranial nerve, deters the natural action of neurochemical processes which create memories and consciousness. I now know that lack of self-awareness labeled by a few people from whom I’ve sought help or, who’ve sought me out to “help” me, was not “denial,” “delusion,” or “dissembling.” Memory loss robs people of their own histories and their own personal points of view. When one’s brain heals and neurogenesis connects memories which, experts suggest, are stored in various places all over the brain, life looks and feels different.
There are many online discussions of memory formation and memory loss. Brain trauma can cause the loss of past memory, (retrograde amnesia) and can impair ongoing short term memory processing (anterograde amnesia). In general, short-term memories are held as needed, and then, moved into long term memory. Experts categorize memory as follows: semantic: memory of facts and knowledge; episodic: memory of personal history; implicit: rote memory; and procedural: how-to or muscle memory. Some experts theorize that short-term memory capacity peaks during the years in which peoples’ work and family responsibilities might be most demanding.
Physical activity improves body-mind connectivity and responsiveness.
There are many books and articles about the latest developments in general healthcare, brain awareness, and neuroscience because brain and neurological health connect to everything in life. A recent “Neuroscience News” article reports that Weill Cornell University researchers found that “in people with inflammatory bowel disease, the pain-sensing neurons are diminished and there are significant disruptions in pain-signaling genes.” The article quotes Dr. Artis of Weill Cornell, “when it comes to chronic inflammation, we’ve been seeing only some of the picture – and now the rest, including the role of the nervous system, is starting to come into focus.”
Our neurons, in the brain and elsewhere, transmit sensory information throughout our body to keep us safe and healthy. Gut pain and sometimes butterflies-in-the-stomach feelings communicate to us when something’s not right. Brain health and cognitive function generally rooted in how people are taught to think and communicate about their minds and bodies, can and generally affect people’s ability to seek appropriate health care. The “Neuroscience News” coverage of the Weill Cornell study of pain sensing neurons in patients with digestive inflammation didn’t mention if the adults in Weill Cornell’s gut inflammation study grew up eating presumably healthy based on a food pyramid. An overabundance of processed grains in one’s diet is now thought to cause brain fog. Neurons that fire together wire together. When we ignore neuronal messaging such as gut feelings, chronic pain, and/or emotional discomfort, we’re headed for inflammation, depression, and learned helplessness. Cognitive dissonance occurs when added information challenges long-held semantic, episodic, and procedural information and memories we have stored in our conscious awareness.
Then, there is subconscious awareness.
Children are dependent and sometimes helpless; episodic memory starts in early childhood. Drs. Peter Levine and Bessel Van der Kolk have written extensively about how our bodies store sensory information that years later can manifest as recovered memory once the person doing the remembering has the understanding and verbiage with which to label those physical and sensory experiences.
Differently focused competing health and educational systems, including spiritual and faith-based systems, determine group and individual dispositions toward what we call “mental health.” Systems that elevate authority, leadership, and following that, compliance, seem to rely on rote learning and response using yesterday’s facts and teachings. Information based systems, while still building on historical foundational knowledge, include more recently acquired observations and awareness.
Our minds develop from connections made from, to and through our individual and collective pasts. While we celebrate our shared cultural milestones, we still have personal milestones we can and should remember.
Happy Thanksgiving.
