How Our Brain Learns and Adapts: The Magic of Memory Reconsolidation

When we’re born, our brains aren’t fully developed; they’re like houses with just the framing up. So, in the beginning, we heavily rely on our lower brain areas and start interacting with the world through our core emotions. These primal interactions happen through instinctive reactions to our sensory experiences. The feedback from these experiences gets stored and helps us learn. Over time, with repetition, these experiences turn into long-term, non-declarative memories, creating implicit prediction models (see our easy to read post on implicit prediction models).

Our brains learn through a method called prediction error. If a prediction is wrong, we update it; if it’s right, we stick with it. This process, which Freud called the Reality Principle, helps us use energy efficiently while adapting to survive. Memories and predictions guide our actions, from our posture to social strategies and facial expressions. These non-declarative memories are (like Tinactin) quick-acting and long-lasting, making them reliable for forming automated prediction models, even though updating them can be tough.

However, these memories can be updated through a process called memory reconsolidation. When we recall and viscerally feel these implicit memories, they become destabilized and open to new information before consolidating again. The provides a potential to change deeply held connections between emotions, events, and self-protective behaviors if new, powerful experiences contradict old expectations. Thus, memory is a constructive process, piecing together bits of the past to predict the future. We are still learning how and where this can apply clinically but any good effective psychotherapy will harness this mechanism in the brain.

Our subcortical systems, memories, and prediction models support the brain’s higher functions, like thinking and feeling. The cortex, allows us to learn and adapt. Unlike our primary instincts, learning involves creating predictions about what is adaptive at the moment (instincts are built in, we don’t have to learn them). What we learn as adaptive may therefore differ from instinctive reactions.

Memory Reconsolidation: A Deeper Dive

Karin Nader and Oliver Hardt’s groundbreaking work revolutionized our understanding of memory. Before their research, it was believed that memories formed linearly, transitioning from short-term in the hippocampus to long-term storage elsewhere. They showed that recalling long-term memories makes them unstable and requires reconsolidation to remain long-term. This means memories can change each time they're recalled, making memory a dynamic process.

Their research indicates that after a memory is reactivated, it stays open to new learning for about six hours before reconsolidating. This process doesn’t damage the brain and is specific to individual memories. Memory reconsolidation has since influenced psychotherapy, such as Bruce Ecker’s Coherence Therapy, by showing that old memories can be updated with new emotional experiences, facilitating growth and reducing anxiety.

This concept aligns with Frank Alexander’s idea of the corrective emotional experience, suggesting that updating old memories with new, positive experiences can help resolve long-standing emotional issues. Interestingly, Nader and Hardt were students of neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, who initially doubted their hypothesis but changed his stance after they proved it correct.

Understanding how our brains learn, adapt, and change through memory reconsolidation not only gives us insight into our own behaviors but also opens up new possibilities for personal growth and therapeutic techniques. Whether we’re dealing with past traumas or looking to improve our adaptive strategies, the dynamic nature of memory offers hope for lasting change.

The three pillars of mental health change

Memory, Completion & Mindfulness are the three pillars for deep and lasting change in mental health and the thing that ties them all together is emotions.

Memory

Our brains love to automate tasks to save energy. But sometimes, in tough situations like trauma, the solutions we learn aren't really solutions at all. Instead, we cope to get through. While coping helps us survive, it doesn't fix things. Our brains then remember this coping as the solution. So, when similar situations arise, our brains automatically activate this coping mechanism. This means we feel and react the same way we did during the trauma. Luckily, memories can change. By recalling and feeling them, they change back into a form where we can alter how they affect us*. This is crucial for changing trauma reactions, whether from past hurts or sudden shocks.

Completion

When we feel threatened, our instincts kick in with fight, flight, or freeze responses. But often, these responses don't get a chance to finish. All that energy gets stuck in our bodies, waiting to be released. Releasing this pent-up energy is essential for our nervous system to regain its balance. This can lead to improvements in anxiety and depression.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness helps us distinguish between the present and the past. It allows us to observe tension without reacting impulsively. By practicing mindfulness, we can slow down and become our best selves. This skill improves with practice and repetition.

Emotions tie all these elements together. They start as physical sensations and evolve into conscious feelings like fear, joy, or anger. Emotions tell us how important a moment is for survival and give us insight into our current state of being.

In conclusion, memory, completion, and mindfulness are vital for deep and lasting change in mental health. By understanding and working with our emotions, we can unlock new levels of well-being and resilience.

*This process is called Memory Reconsolidation and it became known widely from the lab of the famous neuroscientist Joseph Le Doux It was his student Karim Nader who discovered this.

The Triad of Change: Memory, Completion, and Mindfulness in Mental Health

Achieving profound and lasting change in our mental health and emotional well-being requires addressing three fundamental elements: memory, the completion of initiated responses, and mindfulness. These components serve as the cornerstone for transforming our automatic emotional and behavioral patterns and paving the way for new beginnings.

• Memory: Our memories, both short-term and long-term, play a pivotal role in shaping our perceptions and responses to various situations. Long-term memories form the basis of our predictive models, guiding our behaviors and emotions based on past experiences. When we encounter familiar situations, often unconsciously, we default to automatic mode, relying on learned coping mechanisms to navigate through challenges.

However, the problem arises when these coping mechanisms are rooted in survival rather than true resolution. For instance, if as children, we learned to cope with unmet needs by numbing our emotions or shutting down, these patterns can persist into adulthood. Despite having greater agency as adults, our automatic responses remain stuck in survival mode, leading to feelings of panic, clinginess, rage, or withdrawal when triggered by similar situations.

To instigate real change, we must address these ingrained memories and disrupt the automated responses they trigger. This involves discharging emotional distress associated with past experiences and creating space for new adaptive strategies to emerge.

• Completion of Initiated Responses: Many times, when faced with threatening situations, our bodies initiate fight, flight, or freeze responses as a means of self-protection. However, if these responses are not completed, they can linger within us, manifesting as chronic stress or unresolved tension.

Completing these initiated responses involves allowing our bodies to release the stored energy from past traumas, thereby freeing ourselves from the grip of unresolved stress. Through somatic practices and therapeutic interventions, we can facilitate the discharge of pent-up emotional energy and restore a sense of balance and resilience.

• Mindfulness: Mindfulness serves as the bridge between past experiences and present awareness, offering us the opportunity to observe our thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations without judgment. By cultivating mindfulness, we can develop greater self-awareness and discernment, allowing us to recognize and interrupt automatic patterns of behavior.

Rather than simply reacting to stimuli based on past conditioning, mindfulness empowers us to respond consciously and compassionately to the present moment. It opens the door to new possibilities, enabling us to break free from the constraints of past memories and embrace fresh perspectives on our lives.

In conclusion, while there may be countless tools and techniques for enhancing emotional intelligence and behavioral regulation, true transformation begins by addressing the core issues of memory, completion, and mindfulness. By delving into the depths of our past experiences, releasing unresolved tensions, and cultivating present-moment awareness, we can embark on a journey of profound healing and growth. Let us embrace the power of change and embark on the path towards greater well-being and fulfillment.

The 5 Reasons therapy or counseling is actually valuable for you!

Therapy or counseling is often under sold or over sold. When it’s under sold people say it’s just talking to someone and that helps you feel better. It’s much more complex than that with a well trained and experienced therapist. When it’s over sold it’s put inside of marketing language that says it will solve all your problems instantly: all of a sudden you’ll be great with money, relationships are a breeze, you feel balanced emotionally all the time and you find $20 in your pocket. Obviously that’s not right either. So what makes therapy or counseling actually valuable?

Therapy or counseling offers you a chance to feel seen and known.

Don’t under-estimate this. Feeling seen and known is important for everyone and it causes us to feel better. It helps our emotions to express and feel relieved. It helps us feel like we’re not an alien and that we’re not alone. It helps us feel connected. All of this moves us into a place where we can be ourselves more naturally.

Therapy or counseling offers you a chance to change the memories that are responsible for the automatic ways you interact with yourself and the world that are a problem for you.

Likely the brain mechanism at the core of any real change in therapy is something called, memory reconsolidation. When we go through something enough times or intense enough one time we remember it and our brain creates an automatic way to “adapt” to such a moment. This includes what emotions to feel, the meanings we make about ourselves and others, how to hold our body, what to do with our voice and our gaze, how intense to feel, what to do behaviorally, etc. This automatic thing becomes unconscious and then starts to control our lives around those situations or similar situations that still activate those automatic ways. Impacting those memories (whether they are memories we think or memories we just feel) causes new automatic ways to begin to be made.

Therapy or counseling offers you a chance to gain skills of self regulation.

This is not easy and a lot of therapies don’t teach this well enough. Knowing how to regulate your emotions and re-balance your nervous system is not intuitive to most. Learning this skills can change your life. In therapy we learn these skills both through education and practice together but also through the co-regulation of being with the therapist’s nervous system. Having a steady AND open person with you when you start to feel deeply helps you hold and manage your feelings better.

Therapy or counseling offers you the chance to learn about yourself.

Who doesn’t like to learn about themselves!? In therapy we come to know things about how we really feel or think or what desires we have that might be tough for us to come in touch with on our own or in our normal life. I can’t tell you how many times someone has said to me or I have said myself in my own therapy, “I am just realizing this right now as I say it…”. Would you rather be on auto pilot or know what you really want?

Therapy or counseling offers you the chance to make sense of your life.

There’s something calming to the brain when we can name what emotions we’re feeling, when we can put together a narrative that helps us make sense of why we feel the way we do or why we do what we do, etc. In therapy we work towards this often so your brain can calm down and be more present.