Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Will He Remember You ... the Way You
Want Him To?
If you've ever had a long-distance relationship with a guy, and
lose out to a new woman he finds in his hometown, even though
you two had a phenomenal relationship, you might find some new
research interesting, hopefully even consoling.
fMRI, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, lets researchers
watch human brains in action, providing new information about
how we process emotions. And, yes, Virginia, men and women are
different.
Before the fMRI, researchers couldn't observe the sequence of
activity in various parts of the brain during a given mental
activity. The standard MRI only gives a static detailed snapshot
of the structure of the brain. The fMRI, however, gives a video,
showing how the different structures interact, dynamically.
It could be you could maintain the LD relationship better
because of how you store emotionally-charged memories. Turhan
Canli, Ph.D., a researcher at Stanford University, showed 100
photographs to 12 men and 12 women. Some were emotionally
neutral things, like a fire hydrant. Others were emotionally
disturbing, like a severed hand. Three weeks later, he showed
them the same images. The women were 15% more likely to remember
the emotionally- charged pictures correctly. The fMRIs showed
women store both the memory and the emotion linked with it in
the same parts of the brain. Men, on the other hand, use the
same brain regions, but they store the emotions and the memories
in different areas within them.
Environmental factors also play a role, researchers added. Girls
are taught to manage their feelings by bringing them up and
expressing them, while boys are taught to stuff them down in
'manly' silence.
If you're heartbroken that he couldn't remember how good it was,
now you know why. You aren't nuts. You remembered it right, but
he remembered it differently.