Relationship Power in Health Care: Science of Behavior Change, Decision Making, and Clinician Self-Care by John B. Livingstone M.D. & Joanne Gaffney R.N. LICSW

Author:John B. Livingstone, M.D. & Joanne Gaffney, R.N., LICSW
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Published: 2015-05-16T16:00:00+00:00

6. Plasticity and Activation of Subcortical Memory

We do understand that the mind–brain–body is one interconnected dynamic system. The research in the domain of memory reconsolidation sometimes seems to go over the boundary from cellular and systemic neurophysiology and functional histological and gross anatomy into the category of experimental psychology of human behavior and strategies of psychotherapy—while invoking untracked brain events. Workers in memory reconsolidation do this less than workers in many other fields. We hope that some day measurement instruments of human brain functioning will be sufficient to link the two domains in increasing ways. Multiplicity-based psychotherapy utilizes the process of memory reconsolidation for each personality discovered within one patient’s systems. This has proven to be a powerful facilitator of change, presumably on a neural level (van der Kolk, 2014).

While honoring testable hypotheses that help us integrate, we have erred on the side of continuing to separate the findings in the field of memory reconsolidation that are related to CNS/PNS neurophysiology and functional anatomy from those which are primarily derived from observations and research in human psychology.

We believe that the concept of memory reconsolidation will increasingly straddle both fields and that information may flow in both directions, as it does more fully with other organs than with the brain at present. The brain, however, unlike other organs, also produces language. Language expressions are substantives (see Glossary) that by definition do not require a substance to justify their existence or to understand them. We have to be careful not to get into a misdirected search for “reasons,” a substance (like a neural network) behind the language of thought and of feelings, substantives. It is probably not a one-to-one correlation. It is only language. And, there is a human nervous system that registers emotional activation and produces language.

Tanaka et al. (2008) said, “When neurons fire together—within a few milliseconds of each other—they strengthen their existing synapses and form new ones; this is how they ‘wire’ together.” Here is one mechanism of how mental activity might change neural functions.

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