![]() ![]() While the coordinated attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the related downing of United Flight 93 were horrific events, they were not psychological traumas for the vast majority of the American people.Īll those experiences and explanations work to contain the emotional experience. In this definition, trauma is horrific, terrifying, or threatening, and a person doesn’t have an adequate frame of reference to make sense of it.Ī good example is the experience of September 11, 2001, in the United States. The cognitive definition of trauma has a part RELATED: 7 Ways Childhood Adversity Can Drastically Change Your Brain 4. There are many ways to define it, but two stand out. That is how the brain and nervous system form memory. This will happen even though present circumstances may suggest that fighting or fleeing might be more appropriate responses. So, in the future, Kate may freeze when she encounters a strange dog - just as her system froze during the attack. How Kate’s body "should" respond in the present is driven by how it responded the last time to survive the threat. Now, if Kate’s hippocampus is online and functioning (that happens sometime after 18 months, give or take), the brain will more likely have explicit memories that help inform how the body should react to threats in the here and now. Her fear is driven by procedural memory, though she won’t have a conscious memory of the attack. ![]() If the outside help is insufficient or not well-matched to Kate’s nervous system, she likely will have a fearful response to strange dogs in the future. How Kate responds to strange dogs in the future depends on how well her parents and other adults helped her nervous system contain and process this event. That is, Kate acts only on procedural memory (also called implicit memory), which relies on instinctual or conditioned responses and emotional associations ("Doggy!"). These thought-containing memories are called explicit or declarative memories.īecause she lacks an explicit memory that includes the thought "some dogs are dangerous," Kate goes with the happy impulse to run to the dog. This is because, at 18 months, her hippocampus is only beginning to track, sort, and categorize conscious memories that include thought. Kate doesn’t perceive the possible threat from this dog at the park. Specifically, her amygdala has logged good experiences with the mental category of "dog". Kate sees no danger in this new dog because of her positive interactions with the family dog. Unfortunately, it often doesn’t work that way. We’d like to believe Kate won’t remember the dog bite or be affected as she matures. Her grandmother murmurs, "It’s lucky Kate is so young. In the hospital waiting room, Kate’s parents anxiously await the surgeon to come out. The wounds are significant and require surgery. ![]() The dog, not used to small children, tackles Kate and bites her. When you've been traumatized, the brain’s memory system can work a bit too well.įor example, 18-month-old Kate sees a new dog at the park and happily runs to it. This last part is why childhood trauma affects adulthood. Had the cortex determined the object was, in fact, a snake, the nervous system would have propelled a fight or flight or freeze response based on the memories the hippocampus has stored about encounters with snakes. Only a bit later did the prefrontal cortex (the "slow” path) determine with the hippocampus, the brain’s collector of memories, that the object was a stick and not a snake. The ANS increased your heart and respiration rates and engaged your leg muscles to slow. In turn, the hypothalamus sends signals to your autonomic nervous system (ANS) to prepare for the fight of flight. The amygdala determines a possible danger and sends signals to the hypothalamus. It interprets sensory information, attaches emotional significance, and allows your system to start preparing for potential danger before you even know what the danger is.įor example, think of a time when you were walking and saw a dark, long, thin object on a path. This is because the amygdala is the body’s fear center (or smoke detector) that does several things. This "fast" path to the amygdala is important in trauma. ![]()
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