Pain, Drugs and Near-Death Experiences

Recollection and Familiarity

Recollection is the recovery of qualitative information about a specific research episode, such as where or when an incident occurred, whereas familiarity is a more general measure of stimulus recovery or memory power. Yonelinas and Ritche (2015) argue that, in addition to the general issue of the impact of emotion on neural associations with fundamental memory recovery, an additional worry is the precise impact of emotion on neural mechanisms associated with distinct types of memory repossession processes. For instance, some memories are fully recollected like people often remember in-depth details regarding the place, and time that particular events occurred, while other recollections are only acquainted with us, in that, we are only conscious that some events occurred, but we cannot retrieve the specific details about their occurrence. The authors thus attribute this memory advantage to the emotional ingredients which materialized in the delayed state to recollection accuracy and not on the basis of familiarity. Personally, I relate to the authors’ assertion because there is no doubt that emotional events seem to we well remembered. This is evident, for instance, if we basically consider how intense these memories appear, intuitively, when we recall them, and the stronger the emotion is attached to an event, the greater the intensity on the recollection.

Question Two

The hippocampal and amygdala complex govern two autonomous memory systems which interact when memory meets memory. Yonelinas & Ritche (2015) are acknowledging that there are intricacies to these interactions in humans and that there are lots of unanswered questions yet they conclude that the hippocampus has no impact whatsoever on the delayed emotion effects. Even though there are studies that indicate the amygdala’s influence on hippocampal-dependent episodic memory, the writers’ assertions are not clear on how encoding and attention modulation complements the consolidation modulation. The authors also suggest that the hippocampus primarily enhances episodic memory for the gist of an emotional even at the expense of detail, which might be associated with attention. The researchers are only beginning to investigate these issues, and it is unclear if the hippocampal activity is associated with the retrieval of neutral and emotional materials, then how come the hippocampus has no role to play in the production of delayed emotion effects? Precisely what the essence of hippocampal feedback to the amygdala may perform in the facilitation of episodic memory with emotions remains uncharted territories. Also, it is evident that episodic memory plays a role in the representation of human emotion and it can impact the hippocampus. Nevertheless, the study fails to explain exactly how an episodic representation alters hippocampal function hence the ambiguity.

Question three

The mechanisms which contribute to the advancement of persistent and postprocedural or postoperative pain are far more complex as compared to the basic physiological and anatomical underpinnings of memory pain (Sandkühler & Lee, 2013). It is essential to acknowledge that these kinds of pain are not simply instances of momentary pain that fails to resolve speedily. Instead, the neural mechanisms leading to chronic pain arise in the environment and context of nerve or tissue injury and involve changes in the elements of the receptors and that these receptor circuits engage in the spinal cord as well as other levels of the neuraxis. Explicit memory, on the other hand, exists when a patient realizes and remembers it and is often a conscious explicative recollection of a traumatic episode (Sandkühler & Lee, 2013). For a patient that came to see me with symptoms of chronic pain, I would establish the patient’s pain situation by widening his or her discourse from the language of body sensations to talk about their life circumstances and whole life. This would help me link the pain and personality to shift the basis for formulating advice. Given the symptoms, I would objectify the existence of two kinds of scientific explanations and offer short lessons as I set the patient’s issues down to non-physical factors.

Question Four

Skeptics have always argued that near-death experiences (NDEs) are dream-like memories that are fully or partly imagined or of events that are altered memories of real events or events which never occurred. However, based on Thonnard et al. (2013)’s findings, memories of possess more elements as compared to any form of imagined memories of real occurrences, or memories associated with a session of completely unconscious being like a coma. Based on the understanding, the report is indicative of the fact that near death experiences cannot be regarded as hallucinatory episodes. Also, the researchers opined that the memories of the NDEs appear unrivaled and unique. Regarding the scientific study of emotional memories of NDEs, the presented data could imply that the physiological backgrounds of NDEs make the happenings be seen yet not experienced in actuality, for instance, dream-like-occurrences or being a hallucination, being in possession of rich features as recollections of actual occurrences. The number of attributes of near-death experiences features likely is additionally improved by their self-referential and their here-recognized high emotional values. As such, this submits that NDE memories are flashbulb memories of truly professed hallucinations. Even though the resemblances of hallucinations and NDEs are striking, more scientific study is necessitated to categorize the association among these two happenings.

References

Sandkühler, J., & Lee, J. (2013). How to erase memory traces of pain and fear. Trends in neurosciences, 36(6), 343-352.

Thonnard, M., Charland-Verville, V., Brédart, S., Dehon, H., Ledoux, D., Laureys, S., & Vanhaudenhuyse, A. (2013). Characteristics of near-death experiences memories as compared to real and imagined events memories. PLoS One, 8(3), e57620.

Yonelinas, A. P., & Ritchey, M. (2015). The slow forgetting of emotional episodic memories: an emotional binding account. Trends in cognitive sciences, 19(5), 259-267.