If the human body has once been affected by two bodies at once, whenever afterwards the mind conceives one of them, it will straightway remember the other also
If you’ve ever wondered why you can remember some things from long ago yet can’t recall what you ate for dinner last night, a new study led by psychologists at the University of Toronto may help.
How much something means to you actually influences how you see it – as well as how vividly you can recall it later – the study shows.
“We’ve discovered that we see things that are emotionally arousing with greater clarity than those that are more mundane,” says Rebecca Todd. […] “Whether they’re positive – for example, a first kiss, the birth of a child, winning an award – or negative, such as traumatic events, breakups, or a painful and humiliating childhood moment that we all carry with us, the effect is the same.”
“What’s more, we found that how vividly we perceive something in the first place predicts how vividly we will remember it later on,” says Todd. “We call this ‘emotionally enhanced vividness’ and it is like the flash of a flashbulb that illuminates an event as it’s captured for memory.”
related { Scientists Confirm that Memories of Music Are Stored in Different Part of Brain than Other Memories }
photo { René Magritte, Éclipse Solaire, 1935 }
