Halfway through a true crime podcast, a morning commuter jerks the wheel to narrowly avoid a collision. When discussing the podcast with a coworker later that day, the driver can easily recall the details of the episode’s second half but retains only a blurry recollection of how it began.
A new study from psychologists at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology suggests that we remember the moments immediately following a distressing episode more sharply than the moments leading up to it. Clarifying the relationship between trauma and memory can improve how we evaluate eyewitness testimonies, inform therapies to treat PTSD, and help clinicians combat memory decline in brain disorders like Alzheimer’s disease.
This study appears in the journal Cognition and Emotion.
“It’s a clean finding, and it opens up an entirely new dimension for understanding emotion’s impacts…
