Learned Memories and Emotional Memories

The damage drug abuse inflicts on learning and memory is so notable, the Harvard Mental Health
Letter labeled addiction a memory affliction. It described recovery as a slow process in which the
influence of those memories is diminished.1 Thus, a basic understanding of memory formation is
helpful to understanding addiction.

Scientists believe the brain establishes a new temporary neural network to process new stimuli.
Each repetition of the same experience triggers the identical neural firing sequence along identical
neural networks, with every duplication strengthening the synaptic links among those
networked neurons. Neuroscientists say, Neurons that fire together wire together.

If this occurs enough times, a secure neural network is established, as if imprinted, and the brain can
reliably access the information over time. A discrete act of learning has been initiated, reinforced,
and embedded, a process called Long-Term Potentiation (LTP). Most people have experienced
this model of learning when memorizing facts and figures or a foreign languages vocabulary.

Drug use can interfere with LTP. In one experiment (involving rats), for example, morphine disrupted
LTP in a key part of the brains Limbic system, an effect that continued for about 24 hours
thereafter. Dr. Julie Kauer, the lead researcher, explains, Weve shown here that morphine makes
lasting changes in the brain by blocking a mechanism thats believed to be the key to memory
making. So these findings reinforce the notion that addiction is a form of pathological learning.2

LTP isnt the only way to form memories, however. Some experiences are so frightening or
pleasurable their neural firing patterns become implanted not with duplication but from a single
powerful event. Neuroscientists refer to these as emotional memories. A drug high is an example
of an emotional memory.3

Emotional memories and those generated by LTP are processed in different brain regions. LTP is
the province of the hippocampus. Emotional memories, in contrast, are formed in the amygdala, one
of whose primary jobs is to react instantly to danger by triggering the fight-or-flight response.
This takes place unconsciously in a few thousandths of a second. Scientists say that addictive
drugs give an edge to the amygdala over its counter-balancing frontal cortex, the site of reasoning,4
which intensifies the strength of the emotional memory of the pleasure of drug use at the expense of
rational considerations of its negative consequences.5

Researchers have also found that memories are hierarchical. Some are more powerful than others,
some are suppressed in favor of others. Efficient recollection of memories involves pruning of other
less salient ones. Dr. Michael Anderson, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of
Oregon, says, Weve argued for some time that forgetting is adaptive, that people actively inhibit
some memories to facilitate mental focus.6
In the hierarchy of recollection, emotional memories are easier to recall than those formed through
ordinary learning and can override them. Prioritization occurs almost instantaneously and
unconsciously.7

For drug addicts, the emotional memory of the benefits of drugs are so strong and the motivation to
repeat the experience so intense, rational memories about the harm caused by drug use are blotted
out, explaining why addicts cling to drugs despite ever-worsening consequences.

Its the overemphasized emotional memory of pleasure and relief from drugs that must be attenuated
in treatment and subsequent sobriety. That takes time. A lot of time.

http://www.addictscience.com/memory/