A report in the medical journal Cell found a link between our long-term memory and our feelings of sadness (coverage on NPR).
So, thinking about a sad memory will likely make us feel sad.
Well, that’s hardly rocket science, is it?
No, but it is emerging neuroscience.
Despite the phenomenal progress we’ve made in areas like brain surgery, we still know alarmingly little about how our brain circuitry really works.
It also suggests that when we feel sad for no obvious reason, a memory may be at work, often unconsciously.
We may be accessing (thinking about) something in our long-term memory, something from our past — which we may be, and often are, doing unconsciously.
The scientists pinpointed two neighbouring areas of the brain as responsible for sadness: our emotional centre, the amygdala, and our long-term memory manager, the hippocampus.
The findings confirm something that has been central to most psychological theories for a long while, and is now being confirmed by neuroscientists.