Ah, the start of a new semester—the awkward classroom introductions, the reading and rereading of the syllabi and of course, the dreaded sign-up sheet for classroom presentations. While you may not be nervous about that day right now, as the weeks and days before your debut slip away, chances are you will be.
Before you begin to squirm with thoughts of the day when all classroom eyes turn to you, take note: UW-Madison researchers may have identified a way to make the memory of this experience more pleasant.
The UW scientists discovered that how much you worry about a frightening event beforehand directly influences your memory of the experience. For most, these findings highlight how you may be able to shape your memory of a scary situation; for the 40 million American adults suffering from an anxiety disorder, these findings may ultimately offer the development of more effective treatment options.
People who suffer from anxiety disorders are shackled by their fear of what the future holds, said Jack Nitschke, UW-Madison professor of psychiatry and psychology and senior author of the study. ""In the most extreme cases, these anticipatory thoughts can completely disable, leading individuals to not want to leave their homes,"" he said.
In the search to understand the role of anticipation in memory and its dysfunction in anxiety disorders, Nitschke's research team looked to the brains of healthy individuals as they awaited an aversive event. Previous studies led researchers to focus on two regions of the brain—the hippocampus, the brain's memory hub, and the nearby emotion center, the amygdala.
The hippocampus and amygdala work closely together to remember emotional events, both good and bad. Like a backseat driver, the amygdala directs the hippocampus to the events that should be committed to memory.
As the UW-Madison scientists exposed healthy individuals to a series of pictures, both negative (bloody and disfigured body parts) and neutral (miscellaneous furniture and kitchen utensils), imaging techniques traced the activity of the hippocampus and amygdala.
By providing study subjects with clues about the type of picture that was to follow, the researchers monitored the activity of the amygdala and hippocampus during the different periods of anticipation.
Anticipation of the negative photos not only led to elevated levels of activity in the hippocampus and amygdala, but also proved to cause the images to stick in the minds of the tested individuals.
These findings suggest that the brain's activity when worrying may be preventing you from forgetting a negative memory, explained Issidoros Sarinopoulos, a research scientist in the Nitschke lab.
""As worry reinforces the memory of a scary event, an individual can become trapped in a cycle,"" explained Kristen Makiewicz, a graduate student at the University of Colorado-Boulder, former member of the Nitschke lab and an author of the UW-Madison study.
This response can be a reaction to anything traumatic, even the gruesome moments in a scary movie, she added.
So, what can be done to help break us out of this physiological set up? For starters, relax.
Worrying is natural.
""Our tendency to think about future events—including negative ones—is often normal and can have adaptive value,"" said David Lacocque, staff psychologist at University Health Services. ""Without fear, we'd be in big trouble.""
But, for those seeking more comfort, there are other options to deal with worry and the cycle that it creates. To decrease worry, Lacocque suggested that you can choose to avoid things that troubles people or attempts to adjust their thoughts.
""By developing alternative ways to think about a situation, an individual can be freed from rigid thought,"" Lacocque said. ""While this may not lessen the strength of your memory, your memory may have changed in the process.""
