NOSTALGIA: Feelings from Memories
What is nostalgia?
A yearning for a time long gone. Self envy Envying yourself in
a time past. Nick Nowak
Nostalgia is often defined in parts. It isnt one emotion, but rather the
containment of several. Sometimes these emotions will all happen at
once or in stages. Someone may first feel joy initially once a positive
memory is remembered. This joy could turn to a feeling of melancholy
once the unattainability of the past is realized.
Emotional and declarative memories are joined seamlessly in our
conscious experience. That does not mean we have direct access to our
emotional memory.
Storage of Memory
For all purposes, we will hold the understanding that nostalgia is a
positive emotional experience processed through our emotional
memory. This is not to be confused with negative emotions, such as
fear. Although the key to discovering the neurological process a body
undergoes is through the analysis of fear conditioning, the evolutionary
function of nostalgia is much different from that of fear.
PTSD vs PTPS
Post traumatic stress disorder is classified as a malfunction in the
brains ability to control fear (LeDoux). Someone with PTSD continues
to experience the emotional reaction their body tied to a memory.
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
surrounding them and therefore is an unjustified emotion. The initial
cause of such pain is no longer present, just the memory.
In a RADIOLAB episode on Memory and Forgetting, Joe Andoe talks of
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.
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
with the specific sound. Now the animal merely hears the sound and
they feel fear.
(e.g. Mary has a car accident where the car horn wouldnt stop going
off. She now feels fear over hearing a car horn.)
In the case of the rat, we now know that emotional memory is tied to the
sensory system.
Paintings by Joe Andoe (post traumatic pleasure syndrome)
amnesia
Some say the truest form of a memory is found the first time it is
Durability
remembered. This is shown best with the example of amnesia patients Nostalgia consists of pure memory. Joy is nearly in its
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
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
way they every felt towards them. or even just a feeling that is unattainable will be deeper than
the present. Nostalgia comes with sadness once the feeling
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
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
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
strongest trigger for memory.
nostalgia, I have interviewed dozens of people
throughout this month to compare initial responses
to the word nostalgia. A conclusion I have reached
through this casual empirical study is the
connection many have between nostalgic emotions
and childhood. It is true that children to not have
the brain development to overanalyze and miss the
simple beauty of the world around them, but it may
be more fundamental to recognize the immediate
comfort most children are surrounded with. This is
a subcategory of nostalgia that will soon be better
accounted for.
Clips from the movie Ratatouille where cold critic remembers childhood after a bite of ratatouille.
The use:
If we cannot keep memory pure and valid each time
it is re-experienced, we can better see the value of
living in the moment and focusing on the first time
we remember a memory, knowing it will never be as
powerful as the first time we felt the emotion in the
present.
For additional information and sources:
Northern Michigan University
nswick@nmu.edu
Nancy Swick