Rechell McDonald
You may have heard of classical conditioning before, or scent memory, but have you heard of pain memory? In some ways this is an off-shoot of classical conditioning which is more or less negative reinforcement. If we use the example of a dog being taught a behaviour, you ring a bell and then bop the dog on the nose with a rolled newspaper. After enough time, whenever you ring the bell the dog will anticipate the newspaper and cower, or sit/laydown in an attempt to avoid being bopped on the nose. In other words, you no longer need the newspaper, a simple ring of the bell is enough to elicit the behaviour you want from the dog.
Today, this method of psychological training, especially in domesticated pets is frowned upon, however, it frames things nicely for this new research. A study has found that people who experience a high-level of pain while viewing a mundane, normally unmemorable item(s), are able to recall that item a year later when the same type of pain is applied to their body (in this study it was a high-level of heat on their forearm). It’s very similar to scent memory, which is encountering a familiar smell and being able to recall exactly where you were, who you were with, and what you were doing the last time you encountered the scent. This is a very powerful memory trigger that can access latent, normally unrecallable memories. As it turns out, pain may be an equally powerfully trigger.
What is perhaps most interesting about pain is that we seem to have a great capacity to forget it itself, which may be an evolutionary survival mechanism – although there is no particular research to cite on this matter, it’s more or less personal speculation. If you consider the amount of painful things you have experienced in your life, and the amount of time you have voluntarily experienced them multiple times, it sort of stands to reason that our memory for pain is imperfect, and necessarily so. Some events that may serve as an example would be childbirth, tattoos, piercings, and even unnecessary cosmetic surgical procedures. If we had a perfect memory for pain, we may be less likely to repeat painful experiences like childbirth which, as you can see, would have a negative impact on the species. Something to think about.
Posing this thought in contrast to this research provides an interesting dilemma. Why it is that pain appears to sear certain things, like images, into our minds but not the memory of exactly how unpleasant the pain itself is? It’s important to note that this is particular to physical pain and not emotional or psychological trauma. What’s the difference? If we use a car accident as an example, the accident itself may be so scary and traumatizing that you can’t recall anything about it afterward, but if you were injured in the accident, say your leg was impaled with a piece of metal, you may discover that years later any similar pain to that area (like pressing on it with a sharp object) may bring a memory of the accident to the surface, one you’ve never had before.
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