Hi everyone, and welcome to Talks with Dr Shafer. I am a mom, a physician, a board certified Neurologist, a musician, publisher, and creator, on a quest to help others through storytelling. I believe in creating safe spaces to share our stories so that we can heal and grow and support one another, and create an environment where there is no need for shame, but rather a focus on meeting life’s challenges with a focus on the possibilities ahead. This is why I am so excited reading about research in the field of Neuroscience that is confirming what has been believed in the field of Psychology as well, with regards to traumatic memories. Research done at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Yale University, published in Nature Neuroscience November 30, 2023, utilizing imaging studies such as functional MRI and study participants own, real life memories, is showing that in people with PTSD, memories of traumatic events are being accessed in different parts of the brain from memories that are simply sad ones and not traumatic, and that areas of the brain that are associated with our feelings of self are being accessed when the traumatic memories are accessed, rather than the typical location for memories. Is it possible to restore those traumatic memories, minus the negative ideas of self, where they belong where we typically encode our long term memories, in a region of the brain called the hippocampus? And in doing so, can we alleviate the distressing characteristics of recall of traumatic memories, compared to those of sad or other memories stored in the typical fashion in our brains?
