Neuroscientists Just Discovered What Makes You See a Memory as Good or Bad (And Why Two People Can Perceive the Same Result Very Differently)

Imagine you and I are talking in your fourth-floor conference room when the fire alarm goes off. We evacuate the building and watch smoke billow from a set of second story windows as the fire trucks arrive.

A few days later, we are chatting in my conference room when the fire alarm goes off. Somehow you and I have very different emotional reactions. Me? The fire alarm triggers instant terror; we could have been trapped in your building the other day.

You, on the other hand, see the fire alarm as a positive. Hearing the fire alarm means we will not be trapped in my building. In fact, you consider fire alarms a good thing, a system that works.

Same event, two very different reactions.

Neuroscientists call the process of linking feelings with a memory “valence assignment.” Once we feel something, our brain associates it with a positive or negative feeling - a valence - so we know whether to seek it out or avoid it in the future.

For you, a fire alarm is a good memory; we got away with it unscathed. For me, it's a bad memory; we could have been trapped.

How this happens--at the cellular level--is unclear. Scientists know that different sets of neurons are activated when a valence is positive, and others when a valence is negative.

"We found these two paths - analogous to train tracks - leading to positive and negative valence," says Professor Kay Tye, "but we still didn't know which signal acted as a switch operator to direct which track must be used at some point."

So Tye and his colleagues at the Salk Institute used gene editing to selectively delete the gene for neurotensin, a signaling molecule, from mouse brain cells. Without neurotensin, these mice could no longer assign a positive valence to a memory.

It turns out, however, that the lack of neurotensin did not affect the negative valence. In fact, the mice got even better at assigning negative valence. The neurons associated with the negative valence stay on until the neurotensin is released.

Which makes sense. After all, fear is a survival instinct. Avoiding dangerous situations helped keep our ancestors alive. (Think of it like how your brain says, "Let's assume it's wrong until I'm sure it's right.")

Next, researchers introduced high levels of neurotensin and found that it could promote reward learning, think about positive associations, and further dampen negative valence. According to Tye, "We can actually manipulate this switch to enable positive or negative learning."

That all sounds good if we have a steady supply of neurotensin on hand. (Which of course we don't.) But there are ways to mess with the neurochemical system.

One way?

Reframe a negative experience.

Let's imagine that a presentation falls flat.

Take a moment to reflect. Yes, it went wrong. But that's because you weren't prepared. Next time you will know what to do. Or it's because you haven't read the play. Next time, you'll incorporate a few moments of "breathing" so that you can adapt, in the moment, to how your presentation is received. Or because you created the right presentation for the wrong audience. Next time, you will determine the needs of your audience before you even start crafting your presentation.

Mentally attributing positive outcomes - for example, "Here's what I learned" - to a negative situation will help you assign a positive valence to that experience and be much more likely to seek out that experience again.

Or better handle the situation if it happens again.

Prime your self-esteem pump.

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