Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Emotional Memory Formation

From Information Processing:
"A mutation in the gene for the α2b-adrenoceptor improves the formation of memories of strong emotional events. Students in Zurich with the mutation performed twice as well on a controlled test. Rwandan refugees with the mutation tended to suffer significantly more often from flashbacks of traumatic events. So, the mutation affects cognitive function in a clear way. It's also distributed unevenly among different populations -- 30% of Swiss and 12% of Rwandans have the mutant allele."
For more links and excerpts from an interesting Economist article see Steve Hsu's post linked above. However, as the Economist article says:
"Whether that result has wider implications remains to be seen. Human genetics has a notorious history of jumping to extravagant conclusions from scant data, but that does not mean conclusions should be ducked if the data are good. In this case, the statistics suggest Rwanda may have been lucky: the long-term mental-health effects of the war may not be as widespread as they would have been in people with a different genetic mix. On the other hand, are those who easily forget the horrors of history condemned to repeat them?"

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