PTSD: Do Memories Matter?

Do Memories Matter?
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
August 13, 2015


Saturday was a great day, at least it started that way. I went to the VFW to film veterans, especially female veterans, because they never get enough attention.  Any after uploading the video and the pictures, my Mac decided it had enough. After 5 years of constant use and memory nearly used up, despite having external hard rives, I got the wheel of death.  That's when the loading wheel spins until it is ready.  It decided it was just going to spin a last dance.

I took it to the Geeks at Best Buy to see what they could do with it and bought a HP Laptop, figuring if they could fix my Mac, I'd give the laptop to my husband after I got my Mac back.  Now I finally fully understand when people say "Once you go Mac, you don't go back.

Yesterday I found out that it locked up during diagnostics, meaning the problem is most likely in the hard drive. I had to buy another one simply because waiting a couple of weeks to see if it can be fixed, was not an option.

After years of having to replace PC after PC, the constant-long updates and resets, I bought my Mac while taking Digital Media classes and everything was done on Macs.  All this time and never had a problem with it until Saturday.  Great record and it was a loyal friend.

I filled it with two books, thousands of pictures, music and over 200 videos.  It worked hard for me and will be missed but now I have a new one with no memories in it.  Sure, most of the ones I needed are on the external hard drive but the others are trapped in the Mac. One day I'll be able to afford getting the files out but for now, it is sitting on the floor.

This got me thinking about some researchers talking about blocking memories for PTSD veterans. I never thought it was a good idea especially when they are using rodents for research on what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder does. Memories in humans are tied to emotions.  No one can look at a picture of someone they loved and not get a warm, tingling feeling triggering memories of them.

How does a rat feel about family and friends? Do they feel guilt? Do they feel remorse? Do they feel lost or hopeless? Do they risk their lives for another rat or pray to God, Higher Power or the universe for help or grieve when help does not come in time?  Do they ever wonder why they were born? Do they keep memories of their youth beyond what food smells like?  Do their memories become intertwined with emotions at all?

No one seems to know yet researchers have studied rats to better understand PTSD. Some came a conclusion that blocking or erasing memories is the best way to treat PTSD but they are never able to explain what else folks will lose.

Yesterday I posted how a researcher, Dr. Eric R. Kandel, wrote about PTSD and the emotional connection.

PTSD Involuntary Intrusions Vivid, Highly Emotional

The involuntary intrusions are vivid, highly emotional, and involve a sense of reliving the original trauma. In contrast, the voluntarily recalled trauma narratives do not share this same intensity, but their content is notable for being significantly disorganized. Such disorganization can be found very soon after the traumatic event and hence is not attributable to poor recall, but to the very nature of these traumatic memories themselves.

It sounded good until I reached this part,

More recently, Dr. Kandel and his colleagues identified a molecule, a prion protein called CPEB, (cytoplasmic polyadenylation element-binding protein 3) that plays a key role in the maintenance of long-term memories in the sea slug Aplysia and in mice. In a 2015 study, Kandel and his colleagues trained mice to memorize a way to navigate through a maze, then the researchers knocked out the mouse homolog of the CPEB gene called CPEB3 and this knocked out the maintenance of long-term memories and caused the mice to forget how to navigate the maze.

They were researching Alzheimer's disease as well leaving out the simple fact that PTSD comes into the person after a traumatic event. It is caused by trauma, not genetics but researchers are still trying to figure out why it occurs to 1 out of 3 exposed to trauma. (Ok, some researchers are using 1 out of 5 but for decades it has been 1 out of 3)

As long as they keep using rats it will end up as if they used a typewriter instead of a computer able to store memories tied to emotions of the user. And yes, I am still worried the work in the other Mac maybe lost.

I cannot access the files stored in my other Mac but there are still there and most of them are still in my mind. Thousands of pictures collected over 5 years are tied to my heart like this one,

U.S. Troops In Afghanistan Celebrate Thanksgiving Do rats pray? Do they give thanks?

Despite fears of Afghan collapse, U.S. may pull all troops by 2014 Do rats risk their own lives to protect one of their own?

Wounded in Iraq: A Marine's Story Do rats grieve?

The best researchers are like the experts able to fix computers and the worst ones are still trying to figure out what the hell defragging a hard drive is. The best have understood there is a difference between what happens after trauma to rats and what happens to humans.