A typical human cycle time is about 2.5 hours. Although in real-life it can be much longer, or shorter, this time is the average amount of time in which our body takes in food, sleep, and exercise. The amount of time we live in a cycle is actually determined by how our brain, our body, and our hormones are all working.
In our physical life, we cycle through certain activities for rest and recovery. But what about the mental and emotional lives of our lives? In the past, studies have shown that, although we generally cycle through many activities, we can also cycle back to our previous activities. This is because the brain has a built-in mechanism to store memories from one activity in our day. As we cycle through our day, our brain creates a mental and emotional memory.
This new study by Dr. S. Jay Greene explains the process in more detail and shows why our memories are more complicated than just cycles of physical activity. The brain remembers activities and events that it has experienced in the past and stores these memories in a temporary storage area known as the “limbic system.” This temporary storage area allows the brain to hold onto memories that are difficult to forget.
It’s also known as the “long term memory” storage area of the hippocampus. Because these memories are not easily forgotten, they can be kept for a lifetime. In this new study, Greene shows how our brains remember our entire lifetime. The study was conducted by the University of Michigan’s Dr. S. Jay Greene and Dr. Daniel Simons, who is the Director of Neurobiology at the University’s Department of Psychology.
The first memory we have when we are born is our brainstem. Our brainstem stores memory traces that are long-term and long-term. These memories are stored in our brain’s cortex. During childhood, those memories are stored in the hippocampus (which is located in the temporal lobe; see “The Big Questions,” in this book). During adolescence, our memories are stored in the amygdala.
The amygdala is a small nucleus in the temporal lobe that is responsible for our reactions to emotional events. The amygdala is responsible for our fight-or-flight responses. When we are in a stressful situation our amygdala produces a chemical called dopamine which causes our fight-or-flight responses to kick in. When we are in a calm and peaceful situation our amygdala produces a chemical called oxytocin which causes our love-or-hate responses to kick in.
As it turns out, this chemical is actually a hormone that can affect our moods. And the more oxytocin we have the more happiness we feel. The more dopamine we have the more our moods may be affected by this chemical. In other words, if we have too many memories, our moods can be affected. There’s a lot of research that shows we have a lot of negative feelings when we have too much of a memory.
This may be a good reason to get your memory checked out. As it turns out, our brain has a lot of memory, which can affect our mood. This is most important especially in the early years of life, when our cognitive abilities decrease. In fact, the more memory we have the more likely we are to have an emotional trauma.
For most of our lives, we are programmed to have a balance of two types of memories. One is our life story. We can find it hidden deep in our subconscious mind, but it is usually in a form that we don’t always remember. The other is the ‘real’ memories. The real memories are things we can remember and act upon. These are the memories that are our friends, family, children, and the day we were born.
If we are to have an emotional trauma in our life, it needs to be something that we can feel. It needs to be something that is tangible. So we are conditioned to remember our life story with a sense of dread. We fear the loss of our sense of self, our identity, our life story. This is one reason why many of us feel such a powerful need to write.