NOSTALGIA: Feelings from Memories

What is nostalgia? amnesia

Some say the truest form of a memory is found the first time it is
Durability
A yearning for a time long gone. Self envy Envying yourself in remembered. This is shown best with the example of amnesia patients Nostalgia consists of pure memory. Joy is nearly in its
a time past. Nick Nowak remembering powerfully. Memories are not diluted in cases of amnesia strongest form since it is not reattainable. Joy in the present
patients. A patient may remember a grandchild or spouse in a certain moment holds value, as it will slip away in time. With
Nostalgia is often defined in parts. It isnt one emotion, but rather the context, not realizing that they were there for the persons death or
graduation. They remember the person in, perhaps, the most powerful nostalgia, remembrance of a certain time, place, or situation
containment of several. Sometimes these emotions will all happen at
once or in stages. Someone may first feel joy initially once a positive way they every felt towards them. or even just a feeling that is unattainable will be deeper than
memory is remembered. This joy could turn to a feeling of melancholy the present. Nostalgia comes with sadness once the feeling
once the unattainability of the past is realized. senses of the past element is realized.
This explains how certain emotions can be felt by a simple action like smelling a pile Listening to a favorite song too often, it loses its power. It no
Emotional and declarative memories are joined seamlessly in our
conscious experience. That does not mean we have direct access to our
of leaves. Our brains may attempt to bridge the gap and form a memory fitting to our longer reaches someone like it had.
emotion, but in many cases the cognitive memory may not be immediately
emotional memory. attainable.
Simpler Times
More often, emotions are felt through the immediate recognition of what the senses
once underwent. This can be In order to ground my own understanding of
In a book A Natural History of the Senses, the sense of smell is emphasized as the
Storage of Memory strongest trigger for memory.
nostalgia, I have interviewed dozens of people
For all purposes, we will hold the understanding that nostalgia is a throughout this month to compare initial responses
positive emotional experience processed through our emotional to the word nostalgia. A conclusion I have reached
memory. This is not to be confused with negative emotions, such as
fear. Although the key to discovering the neurological process a body through this casual empirical study is the
undergoes is through the analysis of fear conditioning, the evolutionary connection many have between nostalgic emotions
function of nostalgia is much different from that of fear.
and childhood. It is true that children to not have
PTSD vs PTPS the brain development to overanalyze and miss the
Post traumatic stress disorder is classified as a malfunction in the
brains ability to control fear (LeDoux). Someone with PTSD continues simple beauty of the world around them, but it may
to experience the emotional reaction their body tied to a memory. be more fundamental to recognize the immediate
Continuing to undergo a painful emotional reaction to an event in the
past has a heavy toll on a persons ability to cope with basic life matters comfort most children are surrounded with. This is
surrounding them and therefore is an unjustified emotion. The initial a subcategory of nostalgia that will soon be better
cause of such pain is no longer present, just the memory.
In a RADIOLAB episode on Memory and Forgetting, Joe Andoe talks of accounted for.
his post traumatic pleasure syndrome. As an artist, he found his
subconscious was painting images from a past he had forgotten,
creating settings of meadows and young women. Later on he realized
that was the setting and girl he first fell in love with. His pleasurable
memory had been slowly unveiling itself, something that occasionally
happens with nostalgia when the stimuli is repeated. Over time the
memory may reveal itself.
Clips from the movie Ratatouille where cold critic remembers childhood after a bite of ratatouille.
Classical Fear Conditioning
Scientists have tested the association of fear and memory in lab rats by
playing a sound while lightly shocking the rat electrically. When the rat
experiences the shock with the sound simultaneously, it associated pain
The use:
with the specific sound. Now the animal merely hears the sound and If we cannot keep memory pure and valid each time
they feel fear. it is re-experienced, we can better see the value of
(e.g. Mary has a car accident where the car horn wouldnt stop going living in the moment and focusing on the first time
off. She now feels fear over hearing a car horn.)
we remember a memory, knowing it will never be as
In the case of the rat, we now know that emotional memory is tied to the
sensory system. powerful as the first time we felt the emotion in the
present.

For additional information and sources:

Northern Michigan University
[email protected]
Paintings by Joe Andoe (post traumatic pleasure syndrome)
Nancy Swick