Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Selective nature of memory has often helped us thrive; our very survival may depend upon learning the lessons from life-threatening episodes, just like it did hundredths of years ago. However, our ability to selectively remember traumatic episodes can also harm us. Seven percent of the general population suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a form of an anxiety disorder. It usually occurs after you have been through a traumatic event, or events that are life threatening or devastating, bear strong negative emotions or cause intense fear.An interesting fact is that women are twice as likely as men to develop PTSD.
Virtually any trauma, defined as an event that is life-threatening or that severely effects the physical or emotional well-being of a person and causes intense fear, may cause PTSD. Such events often include either experiencing or witnessing a severe accident or physical injury. It can be divided into three main categories: 
Direct experience - such as military combat, kidnapping or a violent personal assault (sexual assault, physical attack, robbery, mugging etc.)
Witnessed situations - including the observing the serious injury or unnatural death of another person due to violent assault, or unexpectedly witnessing a dead body or body parts.
Learned events - meaning events that do not happen to you, and you do not witness, but are tragic to those around you. When you learn of a serious accident, or a serious injury experienced by a family member or close friend, even learning about the sudden death of a loved one.

Experienced any of the mentioned events? You might have PTSD if you develop the specific symptoms.
There are different levels of symptoms for traumatic disorders such as PTSD. Some basic symptoms include re-experiencing of the event, such as flashbacks or nightmares. A more serious step from this is avoidance and fear of anything that may resemble or remind them of the trauma. This also brings on lack of interest for life circumstances. Most striking  symptoms include hyperarousal, inability to sleep, and irritability all the time.



Although you might fall into some of the mentioned categories, do not be in distress as there are different levels for traumatic experiences. They include the following:

• Acute – when the duration of symptoms is shorter than 3 months.
• Chronic – when the symptoms last three months or longer.
• With Delayed Onset - between the traumatic event and the onset of the symptoms there is at least 6 month period.

Both memory and emotion relate to PTSD, as it is a highly negative and emotional experience that can cause you this disorder. It is important to face your memories, and overcome the emotions that stop you from living a normal life. This disorder also effects your memories and emotions of the future. Not only can it cause you to heavily distress your emotional state, it can also affect the formation of future memories. Research reveals the fact that people who have been exposed to extreme stress, and traumatic experiences sometimes have a smaller hippocampus, compared to people who have not been exposed to trauma. The hippocampus is a region of the brain that plays a very important role in memory. This is significant in understanding the effects of trauma in general and the impact of PTSD, specifically since the hippocampus is the part of the brain that is thought to have an important role in developing new memories about life events.

Flashbulb Memory

What is flashbulb memory?
Flashbulb memory is related to the circumstances surrounding your reception of the news1 with confidence and in vivid detail. You can think of it as a "snapshot" of the moment that was surprising, as well as significant to you.
Evidence has shown that although people are highly confident in their flashbulb memories, the details of the memories can be forgotten, and they do not significantly vary from normal memories. The proposal of the Flashbulb Memory theory by Brown and Kulik set a lot of research and studies into motion.

In three following posts, three mayor studies will be explained related to this topic.
They include:

• Brown & Kulik (1977)
• Neisser & Harsch (1992)
• Talarico & Rubin (2003)

Attack on a memory: Talarico and Rubin.

The study of Talarico and Rubin of 2003. The aim of it was to determine, whether flashbulb memory had any more detail compared to normal memories, after certain periods of time.  In this study, the participants were asked to recall the events of the Word Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001. They were asked various questions on four different occasions; 1, 7, 42 and 224 days after the attack. However, this study also tested the memory of an ordinary event that happened at around the same time of the attack. They found out that the flashbulb memory remained very vivid throughout the study, as well, participants were very confident about their accuracy. However participants reported the ordinary memories becoming less and less vivid and reliable, even though objectively they could remember no more details about September 11. From this we can conclude that although we might feel that flashbulb memory is more clear, and remembered, it turns out that flashbulb memories are no different from other memories. Limitations of this study were not so many of as of the previous ones, as ordinary memory was tested, however, it is still a memory related to a powerful event. In order for this to be even more accurate, memory should be checked of an ordinary day, with no exceptional disaster or powerful attack that might remind you of it.

Race to Space: Neisser and Harsch

Neisser and Harsch also conducted an experiment when questioning the effectiveness of flashbulb memory. In 1992, they asked 106 participants to answer questions about the circumstances of their learning of the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Among the questions, five asked about how they heard the news: where they were, what they were doing, who told them, what time it occurred, and so on. Thirty-two months later the participants were asked to answer the same questions again, and their results compared to the original.On the day after the disaster, 21% of the participants stated that they heard about the event on T.V. However, after thirty-two months, the percentage rose to 45%. The findings showed that memories had in fact dimmed, yet the participants were not aware, and still very confident about the accuracy of their questions. This suggests that flashbulb memory is not reliable. From this study we can see that what is different between normal memories and flashbulb memories, is most likely the confidence that people have in their memories associated with significant events.One weakness of this study is the fact that there was no control group in the experiment. This is a significant downside, as you cannot make a comparison between normal memories and flashbulb memories.

The killing of doubt: Brown & Kulik

The Brown and Kulik study of 1977, was the first modern psychological study of Flashbulb Memory. In their theory, these memories are kept through continued rehearsal in the form of discussion, or "re-living" the event. The theory was that these memories are more emotional, and therefor more vivid, last longer and more accurate. The aim of their study was then to investigate whether dramatic, or personally significant events cause flashbulb memories. The study was conducted using a questionnaire, asking 80 American participants to asses the memories of when they learned a shocking personal and social events, and how often they used to recall them. Nine of the events, for example, were assassinations of well known American personalities. The findings of this study showed that flashbulb memories were more likely to occur in unexpected and personally relevant shocking events. The assassination of J.F. Kennedy in 1963 led to the highest results, with more then 90% of the participants recalling the event in vivid detail. What we can infer from this study is that dramatic events can cause memories to form a memory of the event; which was clearly consistent with Brown and Kulik's theories. Some limitations on this study is the fact that the data was collected through questionnaires, so it would be very difficult to verify the accuracy of the memories, or responses given by the participants.

Emotion of Anger.

Emotion can sometimes be the results of our thoughts.Any event that occurs in our life, can be thought about in a negative, or a positive light. A video on Seneca, the ancient philosopher, thought that we can learn to prevent certain emotions from getting the best of us, if we are prepared. In his belief, emotions come from our cognitive evaluations of situations. He believed that the emotion of anger, is a result of a fact that we are unprepared for the little everyday annoyances that life supplies us with. We do not think pessimistic enough, or not at all about all the things that could go wrong - we are not prepared for anything but the good. When something that we do not plan occurs, we feel surprised, and as a result of that we often feel disappointed, helpless and angry. This connects to the theory of emotions of Lazarus. His theory states that a thought must be processed, before any emotion can be detected. In other words, you have to think about the situation you are in - either in a positive, negative or neutral way -  before you can experience emotion. What both of these men hint at is the fact, that your emotion rise from your thoughts on the specific emotion. And you can change your thoughts, so your emotions have to be changeable as well. Basically, the same idea has risen, in different time periods. Could it have something to it? What Seneca has been trying to do, is coach people not to give into anger, or deep negative emotions. His ideas help Lazarus' theory in many ways. He pointed out that often, people have too high of expectations that can are almost never met. And I agree. One way to learn how to be "more happy" and calm down is to not to always expect the best. This sounds a little demotivating, but when things turn out be better then you thought - you are happy, and suddenly the whole day is pleasant. " If you cannot change it - ACCEPT IT and don't stress."

You cannot learn facial expressions.

Have you ever wondered if facial expression is learned from observation of other people, or if it is something  out of our control? For a long time people have thought that we learn how to express our emotions facially, from observing how people around us act in different situations. However, according to a study done in 2008, facial expressions of emotion are given by our genes. 

This study is the first in it's area to demonstrate that blind individuals, use the same facial expressions as those who can see, and produce the same facial muscle movements in response to specific emotional stimuli. It provides a new insight on how people manage emotional displays, and suggests  that the ability to regulate emotional expressions is not learned through observation. In this study, a psychology Professor David Matsumoto compared the facial expressions of sighted and blind judo athletes at the 2004 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games.His findings reveal that hat sighted and blind individuals manage their expressions of emotion in the same way according to social context. In his study he noticed that 85 percent of silver medalists who lost their medal matches produced "social smiles" during the ceremonies. Social smiles, are forced smiles that use only the mouth muscles,to cover up their true emotion with "happiness". True smiles,  cause the eyes to twinkle and narrow and the cheeks to rise. The losers tended to push their lower lip up as if to control the emotion on their face, an therefore produced social smiles. Participants of the study that were blind from birth, would never have the chance to earn to control their emotions in this way - through visual learning. Therefore there must be another mechanism that causes it. It is possible that  our emotions, and the systems to regulate them, are "leftovers" of our evolutionary ancestry

"The statistical correlation between the facial expressions of sighted and blind individuals was almost perfect," Matsumoto said. "This suggests something genetically resident within us is the source of facial expressions of emotion."

I choose this article because all of the other ones submitted were either repeating each other and what I already shared on my blog, or did not have enough interesting facts behind it to interest me. This specific article,  - "Facial Expressions Of Emotion Are Innate, Not Learned" by Science Daily  - relates to our class discussions since it supports that emotions and how we express them are given to us by nature. Humans can connect to each other through emotions, as their vast range is what in fact makes us different from those who came before us. If both blind and sighted people react similarly with their emotions and their expression, then there is much more for us to learn and discover in the field of Psychology.