Contents:
- Medical Video: Why Are You Anxious?
- Anxiety can sharpen a person's memory
- What is the connection between anxiety and memory?
Medical Video: Why Are You Anxious?
Anxiety and worry are natural, so it will not have a negative impact on one's psychological condition. However, anxiety can sometimes make it difficult for you to forget a certain experience. In other words, anxiety can sharpen your memory.
In fact, the anxiety that you experience can make you remember in detail the events of the past week. A new study shows that someone who has a high level of anxiety has a memory that is stronger than someone who is not easily anxious.
Anxiety can sharpen a person's memory
When you are anxious, you can remember everything more clearly. According to experts, anxiety makes you more sensitive to negative emotions so you will remember details that are actually mediocre in a negative perspective.
Actually, it is not certain how anxiety can improve memory. However, a new study published in the journal Brain Science shows that anxiety can help the brain record events, interactions, and conversations that occur.
The research shows that anxiety makes you feel more aware of whatever is happening around you, so you are able to capture details that you don't normally notice.
Here's the picture, you're notmoodbecause a lot of problems and you go to the cafe. After ordering the coffee in the cafe, the barista asked in his usual tone, "Does the coffee want to use milk or not?"
Because at that time you are anxiously afflicted with problems, you interpret the mediocre questions from the barista as a negative thing. You might be thinking, "Why, anyway, is this a person asking questions?"
Finally, you will continue to remember the incident in the cafe as a negative experience. When asked by others, you might say that the service in the cafe is bad. Even though at that timemoodYou're good, the question from the barista you probably won't remember at all.
What is the connection between anxiety and memory?
Anxiety can sharpen memory because of negative emotions. You will of course remember more emotional moments than just ordinary situations.
Under normal circumstances, a part of the brain called the hippocampus can sort out less important information and forget it at the same time, not stored in memory. So, it is less likely to remember trivial things that make you upset.
Now, when you are worried, there is a change in the chemical process in your brain. The blood that is supposed to be more flowed into the hippocampus turns to the neocortex. The neocortex is a storage area for long-term memory. Therefore, the experience that should be stored in short-term memory is finally stored in long-term memory.
Finally you also find it difficult to forget about an event when you are enveloped in negative feelings. Therefore, anxiety is said to sharpen one's memory.
However, it does not mean suddenly your ability to remember everything becomes stronger. Only certain events or events that you can remember well, precisely those times when you are afflicted with anxiety.
In addition, the latest research is also still very limited. This study was only conducted on participants in their 20s so that the results might be different for people in other age groups. Experts also still have to learn exactly how the brain mechanism remembers something in anxious state.
