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Notes -
My notes are disorganized, spread out over my app and screenshots, so I’ll give you topics to plug into google scholar. When you learn something, that information goes through a reconsolidation window <8 hours, which is the memory cementing into your brain. Now, when you remember something (from the cues that point to the old memory), the old memory is “reactivated” and then shortly afterward re-enters the “reconsolidation” window. During this window, an old memory can be updated and changed, including its emotional aspects, but only if it goes through reactivation before the attempted manipulation.
memory reactivation reconsolidation craving / addiction [for its use in drug addiction and alcoholism, which can be extended outside its scope because addiction can be construed as a really strong desire or a thing just having very high positive valence]
memory reconsolidation music / affect [one study found that, after reactivating a memory, if you remember it with music then the memory takes on the vibe of whatever music you listen to. In other words, when you remember things under the influence of music, your memories may become more like the music emotionally]
Tetris effect PTSD [car accident patients at a hospital, when brought in during the reconsolidation phase of the memory, if you have them play Tetris their rate of PTSD decreases; similarly, if you have people reactivate a car accident memory and then play Tetris right after, their rate of negative flashbacks decrease]
eyewitness misinformation effect test reconsolidation [if you have eyewitnesses take a test where they relay everything they saw, and then you introduce “misinformation” afterward eg by an interviewer just telling them false information, then they are likely to revise their true information into false information. This is stronger than if they didn’t take the test. The act of taking a test actually increases the amount of misinformation grafted and updated into the old, true information]
reactivation reconsolidation fear / phobia [the new paradigm of treating phobias is that reactivation must occur for the memory to have longterm change through exposure. For instance, if you’re afraid of mice, you would briefly recall past fearful memories for 8 minutes, wait a few minutes, then “exposure” yourself to the mice. This updates previous memories, whereas an exposure session without the memory reactivation has less longterm extinction (or none at all)]
a recent study trending online, “improving mental health by training the suppression of unwanted thoughts”. https://x.com/AdamMGrant/status/1888968823929471032 . In this study, the Cue of an unwanted thought is focused on for a couple minutes, and then a person “trains” himself to ignore any thoughts that come afterward. This is reactivating (focusing on cue intensely), and then updating the old memory through reconsolidation manipulation (focusing on quieting the mind).
There’s a case I read of a child who saw a snake at a park and had no emotional reaction, but injured her hand on a car door an hour afterward. She became phobic of snakes. This is because the memory of the snake was meshed with the injury during the snake’s reconsolidation window, amplified by the evolutionary “potency” of snakes which make them particularly sensitive to this phenomenon (speculated).
Alcohol after learning can help retain information, and thus is speculated to occur because it blocks out the learning of “new” information which can cause interference with the pre-alcohol information; in other words, the pre-alcohol reconsolidation is protected against any post-alcohol memory interference because we learn less when drunk.
Perhaps one more tangential topic: giving yourself a test is often better for learning than reading / elaborating, but when you know very little of the material, it’s actually worse because you could “train” yourself to provide the wrong answer when seeing the cue. When studying, if you don’t know the answer, it’s better to not answer the question than guess, it would seem
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