SPIKE ADRENALINE

“Now, memory is simply a bias in which perceptions will be replayed again in the future. Now, this might seem immensely simple, but it raises this really interesting question, which we talked about before, which is why do we remember certain things and not others? Because according to what I've just said, as you go through life, you're experiencing things all the time.”

“What's happening is that you're encouraging the firing of particular chains of neurons that reside in a particular circuit, right? So a particular sequence of neurons playing neuron A, B, C, D, played in that particular sequence over and over and over again. And with more repetitions, you get more strengthening of those nerve connections.”

“It is the presence of high adrenaline, high amounts of norepinephrine and epinephrine that allows a memory to be stamped down quickly and far and away different than the idea that we remember things because they are important to us or because they evoke emotion. That's true. But the real reason, the neurochemical reason, the mechanism behind all that is neurochemicals have the ability to strengthen neural connections by making them active just once.”

“What they found is that if one evokes the release of adrenaline through this arm into ice water approach, the information that they read previously, just a few minutes before, was remembered, it was retained as well as emotionally intense information. This had to be the effect of adrenaline released into the brain and body, because if they blocked the release or the function of adrenaline in the brain and or body, they could block this effect.”

“Conditioned place preference, as with condition place avoidance, depends on the release of adrenaline. It's not just about stress. It's about a heightened emotional state in the brain and body. You can get one trial learning for positive events, condition place preference, and you can get one trial learning for negative events. This turns out all to be true for humans as well.”