Memory, Time Perception and Trauma

Overwhelming sensory experiences (traumas) impact human experience and subsequent memory encoding.Trauma often warps perception and memory in predictable ways: it affects the completeness of memory encoding; it can create a mismatch between subjective time and actual elapsed clock time; it can either repress or limit the retrieval of memory, or alternatively, can create intrusive memories. In the first section, I propose an integrated theory of memory based on leading ideas of sensory processing, memory formation, storage and retrieval. These theories reference physics and mathematics, including frequency’s role in awareness; self-similar or archetypal impact on encoding; timelessness and perspectival (or relative) time. In part two, I describe trauma, and look at current research on how it impacts perception.  I include more detailed looks at three different trauma-impacted memory states (Memstates). I look at the expanded state (dilated), frozen (repressed) and disjointed (impressionistic). I include examples for each memory type, and reference various somatic and trauma research texts as needed. There are of course, many more than three Memstates as many as there are words for love or words for snow in Eskimo. To become familiar with the flavor of our own perceptions, memories and meaning-making, including their fallibility and vulnerability, can become a deep study in awareness, and an inducement to humility and deeper trust in the convictions others hold of their own perceptions. In addition, I look briefly at endocrine impacts on information processing. Towards An Integral Theory of Memory Encoding While there is currently no agreed on or complete understanding of how the different elements of perception, awareness and memory work, there are some clues emerging in the research. Here, I propose the development of an integrated concept of how conscious experience might occur.Sensory InputsI’m going to start from the place where outside stimuli meet the human sense organs. Sensory streams hit corresponding sense receptors in the human body, which convert qualitative experiences from outside of the body into raw information signals in different parts of the brain. A current theory is that this translation is done through frequency: the brain flattens the 4D world into a 2D formula, and then consolidates that into a single point. It sort of reverse engineers a hologram, creating a mathematical understanding of the interference pattern in the wave that it is taking in. In neuroscience, this holographic theory of memory proposes that experiences are encoded in the brain in a complex, multi-dimensional pattern which contains all the information about the memory. This seems to rest on the idea of mathematics as a language that can describe all of material reality in a highly detailed, precise and transmissible way. Here are some simple examples of math as the underpinning of all qualia that we are familiar with in everyday life: we match paint to our couch cushions with hex values or RGB numbers, we quantize sound with decibels, we send an image across the airwaves through a digital photograph, which encodes and compresses a representation of material reality into a 2D image, we listen to the radio at 101.5 FM and we are listing to interferences in a broadcast at 101,500,000 oscillations per second.  These are examples of how frequencies of light-sound-energy can all be perceived and translated into math. Now imagine doing that with a high resolution continuous sensory stream running sixteen to eighteen hours a day nonstop, like the individual mind does: this is a highly complex computational conversion! In this theory, all perception is a wave function: the mind encodes material reality (deconstructing matter) to store experience, and decodes (or reconstructs a representation) it in real time on recall. There are weaknesses and glitches in this perceptual stream. For example, if there are gaps or things that don’t fit in the stream the computation will smooth it out, filling in the blanks or taking out “unneeded” information. In visual processing for example, take saccades, the movements that occur when human eyes go rapidly from one point to the other and then refocus- this movement effectively blurs perception. Saccades and blinking together cut a full hour out of our visual stream each day, but we don’t notice it. That’s because transsaccadic memory fills in the blanks, and evens things out. This quality of the raw stream conversion can also be impacted by the healthiness of the sense organs due to age, disease, injury and genetic predisposition. If the organ of perception is damaged, the inputs will be corrupted at some level.These biological processes are now being considered as part of the nascent field of “quantum biology” in which quantum effects are visible in sensory perception, such as “the transport of electrons and protons in …respiration, vision, catalysis, olfaction, and in basically every other biological transport process.” Input Stream IntegrationIn this next step of perception, differentiated sensory frequency streams (visual, audio, etc) move to the Posterior Parietal Cortex, where they are integrated into a single raw “moment” of perception, and readied for rapid cleanup.  Before the raw “moment”  moves into awareness, it is polished up through a complex set of assessments. These assessments appear to happen in parallel, in milliseconds, to help decide what to present to consciousness, and at what level of detail and urgency. This seems to be informed by multiple inputs.

• The first input is endocrine signalers at the time of perception: sensory experience is accompanied by neurochemical response even before it moves into consciousness. For example, a rush of dopamine or adrenaline tells the brain to pay attention, to grab more details or frames per second, thereby weaving in a concurrent internal biochemical information stream. What instinct triggers the chemical reaction prior to perceptual encoding isn’t clear. We do know that perceiving novel external stimuli triggers “a cascade of molecular events leading to the formation of memories. These changes include the modification of neural synapses, modification of proteins, creation of new synapses, activation of gene expression and new protein synthesis."
• The second input is a handshake to existing personal stored experience.
• A third possible input comes from epigenetic and genetic pointers to what has mattered to our ancestors. We know that epigenetic mechanisms are involved in long-term memory formation, but we don’t know the role in new experience encoding. It seems logical that we would consult this vast information set to see if what’s happening in the moment is worth paying any special attention to.
• Fourth, it’s possible that we are also tapping into a much larger field: archetypal resonance, morphic resonance, the collective consciousness, the quantum hologram. Rogue biologist Rupert Sheldrake, the originator of the morphic resonance theory defines it this way: “it is the influence of previous structures of activity on subsequent similar structures of activity organized by morphic fields. It enables memories to pass across both space and time from the past. The greater the similarity, the greater the influence of morphic resonance. What this means is that all self-organizing systems, such as molecules, crystals, cells, plants, animals and animal societies, have a collective memory on which each individual draws and to which it contributes.”

All of these inputs might inform the dropping of unneeded information, or the addition of new information into the packet of the moment - so that it arrives into awareness slightly altered from the raw streams of data.  The moment is already preloaded with meaning, pattern recognition and possibly most importantly: sentiment, emotion and feeling.  This in turn, produces subjective experience, and the awareness of one's own thoughts, sensations, and surroundings. From awareness, the packeted moment goes into storage. The brain now has to allocate a memory to short term memory, or long term memory. What’s worth keeping and at what resolution and level of retrievability? Memory consolidation is the process by which experiences and information are converted from short-term memory into long-term memory. This process is essential for learning and retaining new information. During a process called synaptic consolidation, the brain strengthens the connections between neurons that are activated by a particular experience or piece of information. This strengthening allows the neurons to more easily transmit the information to each other in the future, making it easier to retrieve and recall the information. A process called system consolidation involves the transfer of information from the hippocampus, which is important for short-term memory, to the neocortex, which is responsible for long-term memory. This transfer is thought to occur gradually over time and may involve the reactivation of the memory trace in the hippocampus.  And what if this packet is further condensed to a point, which would allow near-infinite storage of memory?There are multiple theories on where and how memory is stored: it’s an edge question in neuroscience. Somatic theory, for example, says memories are stored in the tissues throughout the body and only en- and decoded in the brain. Epigenetic memory theories suggest that everything that happens in your lifetime is stored in the epigene at every fractal level of the body, in every cell, to instruct your future self and your descendants on what might be helpful to express genetically from their multi-potentiate DNA.  Another theory is that memories are sort of ‘backed up to the cloud’: uploaded through energetic emanations into an invisible collective unconscious, where all possible human experiences are stored in a way that an attuned human from any era could retrieve them.Another interesting finding is that memories, when stored, are still plastic. They are modulated by and changed by new information and experiences subsequent to the prior experience. This plasticity allows the brain to encode and store new memories in a flexible and dynamic manner, possibly even stacking many memories in a single point, in a form or recurring experience version control. You don’t need a whole new document, just an update to the most recent version of an experience (example: my body doesn’t have need a separate memory for each of the 140,000 down dogs I’ve done in my yoga practice, just a platonic form of a down dog- and it only needs the most recent or possibly the best one, which incorporates all the ones that have gone before). Time Perception in Encoding“Whether or not we live in the field block universe of eternalism, where the passage of time turns out to be illusory, the order of events and the interval between them sculpts our neural circuits…the temporal asymmetry of cause and effect, for example, is codified at the most fundamental level within the brain.”- Dean Buonomano, Your Brain is a Time MachineDuring perception, there are other concurrent mechanisms at work in the brain, creating a framework of spatial orientation, and an encoding of time and sequencing. Both spatial and time perception are governed by the same cells in the hippocampus. The brain effectively time stamps our unfolding lives through these “time cells”, as follows: “As sensory neurons fire in response to an unfolding event, the brain maps the temporal component of that activity to some intermediate representation of the experience — a Laplace transform, in mathematical terms. That representation allows the brain to preserve information about the event as a function of some variable it can encode rather than as a function of time (which it can’t). The brain can then map the intermediate representation back into other activity for a temporal experience — an inverse Laplace transform — to reconstruct a compressed record of what happened when.”While multiple brain regions are involved in elapsed time perception, it is primarily the work of the hippocampus, which can “organize scalable representations of time in both rate and temporal coding frameworks”. Time cells track “precise representations of time on a scale of tens of seconds” depending on what task is being done, and whether that task requires elapsed time to be measured in the thinnest of slices or more loosely. Time cells make sequencing and step-by-step processes possible, as well as the recall of sequences of events.Notes on Hormones, Memory and TimeHormones also play a role in time perception, though the exact mechanisms are not well understood. Here are some examples:

• Oxytocin, which is involved in social bonding and attachment, can alter a person's perception of time by increasing the subjective experience of time passing more slowly. 
• Melatonin, which is involved in regulating sleep and wake cycles, can also affect time perception by making time seem to pass more quickly when it is dark and more slowly when it is light. 
• High central nervous system levels of acetylcholine during wakefulness aided in new memory encoding, while low levels of acetylcholine during slow-wave sleep aided in consolidation of memories. 
• Hormones such as cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine are released in response to stressful or emotionally charged events and can enhance memory consolidation, making the memory stronger and more enduring. On the other hand, high levels of these hormones can also impair memory formation if they are released in excessive amounts, such as during prolonged periods of stress.

TraumaIf time divides and cuts asunder the steady flow of reality (Gebser in The Ever Present Origin), then trauma seems to dice it up. Let me begin with a working definition of trauma, which is from my earlier work on spiritual ecology and collective healing, as printed in The Weave magazine:Trauma (traum=wound in Greek) happens when cultural, familial, and individual experiences overwhelm the nervous system: when things are just too much to take. Trauma is not inherent in any one experience, but in the response to the experience. Responses can differ based on Individual and collective coping mechanisms and skill sets, prior experiences, and even epigenetic inheritances. There are different kinds of traumas- shock traumas, and developmental traumas (which are often chronic). Trauma adaptations are best seen as protective intelligences.  This overwhelm results in nervous system responses which freeze the experience in the physical body, as well as in psychic and behavioral adaptations designed to help the person avoid similar experiences in the future. Such adaptations are a kind of intelligence, but they outlive their usefulness: unprocessed trauma acts as a “reality distortion field.” Trauma that is not integrated takes people out of the present: a part of us is still in the past, on a time delay- we see the world through an accumulated time delay.According to NICABM, trauma impacts explicit memory, which includes semantic memory (names, places) and episodic memory (what happened, who, where, why and how). It also impacts implicit memory, which includes emotional memory and procedural memory.  Trauma can also impact how we make meaning from an event. When a person experiences trauma, their brain may encode the memory of the event in a way that is different from other memories. The intense emotions and stress associated with the event can disrupt the normal process of memory formation and cause the memory to be encoded in a fragmented or disorganized way. This can make it difficult for the person to retrieve the memory accurately if at all- and what is retrieved may be fragmented or distorted. This can make it challenging for the person to remember the details of the traumatic event, and they may also experience symptoms such as flashbacks, nightmares, and intense emotional reactions when reminded of the trauma. Memstates1. Theories on Expanded (Dilated) Memstate Personal Story: Saturday, January 13, 2018, 8:07 am. The phone buzzed with an emergency alert system message: “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.” JS and I are laying in the bed in the moon cabin, the bed is in the old position, on the screen side, facing out toward the lawn. The walls are still that periwinkle blue, white frayed seersucker linens, a bouquet of pink anthurium on the side table, orchids tied into the tree outside in full fuchsia bloom, a light wind caressing the hyper-saturated landscape. The dawn chorus is no longer at peak volume, things have quieted to a slow twitter; the sun slants in catching the dust particles in a golden glow; JS and I are lying skin to skin. The message interrupted us talking about the health of the older mango trees, planning our day off. The first thing we did was check for corroboration: the socials, Big Island Now, Hawai'i County emergency response. The second thing we did was text our family thread, and then call our seven combined children to tell them we loved them, and then our moms. We walk barefooted, over gravel and ironwood cones, noting aloud how perfect the day was, how perfect this earth is, to the yoga deck, the one painted so carefully with an infinity mandala. On this day I see it is chipping at the edges, peeling from the elements. We sit down, leaning against each other, and face North Korea. We do metta meditation and Ho'ono'p'ono. If this is to be the end, we will go out lovingly and laughing. A few minutes later (almost 40 minutes of existential doubt, which seemed like hours), and another message came in: this was a false alarm. I can feel every detail of that moment, too: big gulping snotty tears of relief. Then the quiet exhale of all of sympathetic nature.The question is: Why can I remember this almost better than hospital childbirth? Every sensation is as real as if it was happening right now. This is one Memstate: Expanded (Dilated).Explanation: The first thing that we know about this state is that endocrine signals accelerate, increasing the frame rate and intensifying the amount of information allowed in, thus creating a hyper-detailed experience.  Researcher Eve Isham postulates an Attentional Model of Time Perception, where “more attentional resources are allocated to an event the event appears longer lasting.”  In other words, greater levels of arousal lead to estimations of longer time.According to the theory of relativity, time moves relative to the observer, and fast moving  objects experience time more slowly. The kind of perceptual overdrive implied in the attentional model would make your processor move very fast indeed.Temporal dysregulation is a symptom of PTSD and attention disorders. In fact, “the most common peritraumatic dissociative symptom was time distortion (56.6%). Subjects with peritraumatic dissociation were 4.12 times more likely than those without to have acute PTSD and 4.86 times more likely to develop chronic PTSD.” Time overestimation persists in PTSD, showing up “during stressful experiences and negative arousing tasks.”2. Theories on Frozen (Repressed) Memstate: Personal Story: November, 2022. When I went home for Thanksgiving, my brother and I started talking, and I was told that we had a dog for the last three years that I lived in my family home. Now, I can remember getting the dog with my mother and brother, and naming the dog Fritz, and the first few months of playing with it. But after my mother left and was subsequently murdered, I remember nothing about the dog. I also don’t remember many other things in that time period: only the most consequential survival things. I have vague memories of going to school, doing gymnastics or dancing, and a few clear stretches. As I heal, more and more memories (and high resolution memories at that) are coming back. So, why couldn’t I remember I had a dog? Explanation: In repressed memories, memories are captured, but memory retrieval is blocked out, creating a vacuum or gap in available information. While the specifics of the memory are unavailable, a frozen Memstate can create a timeless encoding of not just the memory itself, but an adaptive belief system that then exists without the need to reference any particular memory. It’s like having a secret driver at the wheel, within which one operates. Untreated traumatic memories can cause PTSD, anxiety, depression and other mental disorders.This repression of memory is initially a valuable adaptation. Author of The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, and chronic trauma specialist Bessel van der Kolk talks about repression as dissociative amnesia, saying,“Dissociation is a temporary putting aside, not knowing, and not noticing. It’s a way to survive. Blocking things out allows many traumatized people to go on. It may be very helpful in order to make it through the crisis, but in the long run, living your life in a dissociative way only keeps the trauma alive. As a result, you allow other people to hurt you or you depend on others to take care of your feelings. This also happens to societies and communities that keep pretending nothing is going on. Such denial, in fact, keeps the trauma alive by keeping us from confronting it and dealing with it.”Interestingly, there is still debate in the scientific community about whether repressed memories exist, but that memory debate is getting research based answers. In 2015, scientists at Northwestern University identified chemical receptors that go to work in fear-inducing events (extra-synaptic GABA receptors). When these receptors are activated, the brain uses “completely different pathways to store the memory. On a genetic and molecular level, entirely different systems exist to store traumatic memories and normal memories separately.3. Theories on Disjointed (Impressionistic) Memstate: Personal Story: Over a period of 3 years between 2011 and 2014, my husband was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and underwent extensive treatment, we moved houses, I produced 2 giant TEDx events and ran a growing consulting firm (including securing the biggest project of my life), 2 of our 6 combined children were in school, my eldest daughter had a baby, my husband had multiple affairs and then left the family. I cannot discern the sequence of events without reference to a calendar or other documentation. All three years are permeated with one story: “my husband recovered from cancer and left.” It’s not that I can’t remember the other events in this case, the detail is all there, it’s that the timeline is jumbled. Through healing modalities, I now have access to more clarity, and there is alignment between the calendar and my memory.  Explanation: In this Memstate, sensory inputs are captured, but they are dysfunctionally correlated. Various inputs- mixed  sound, scent, timelines, sequences of events- are fractured and uncoordinated. Like the Frozen memstate, the jumbled or disorganized state also produces a kind of timelessness, but the brain pathway fractures at synthesis, which differs from the brain pathway which represses memory.ConclusionI hoped to point to an integral understanding of time, memory and perception, touching on the complex and interdisciplinary learnings in endocrinology, neuroscience, quantum biology, epigenetics, psychology, physics, and more currently fringe thinking such as morphic resonance, that are informing current theories and research. The multimodal mechanisms of chemicals, frequencies, electrical impulses, and mechanical or structural components (like organs and synapses), all play a role in this complex process of awareness, and all of it rests on being awake to perceive anything at all. The paper also offers a rudimentary pointer to how we might move toward a taxonomy of memory states, and possibly develop cogent understanding of the symptoms of being in a warped state. Merely by understanding the mechanism of perception, memory encoding, storage and retrieval, and the places they can be corrupted, we are closer to greater choice, peace and understanding of ourselves and others.SourcesARTICLES (other than footnotes)Gable PA, Wilhelm AL, Poole BD. How Does Emotion Influence Time Perception? A Review of Evidence Linking Emotional Motivation and Time Processing. Front Psychol. 2022 Apr 27;13:848154. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.848154. PMID: 35572264; PMCID: PMC9094696.Lee, J.Y., Jun, H., Soma, S. et al. Dopamine facilitates associative memory encoding in the entorhinal cortex. Nature 598, 321–326 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03948-8Ali SA, Begum T, Reza F. Hormonal Influences on Cognitive Function. Malays J Med Sci. 2018 Jul;25(4):31-41. doi: 10.21315/mjms2018.25.4.3. Epub 2018 Aug 30. PMID: 30914845; PMCID: PMC6422548.Koole, S. L. (2009). The psychology of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Cognition and Emotion, 23(1), 4–41.  BOOKS Buonomano, Dean Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of TimeWelch, Kerri A Fractal Topology of Time: Deepening into TimelessnessHübl, Thomas Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural WoundsOgden, Pat Trauma and the BodyRothschild, Babette The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma & Trauma TreatmentBuzsaki, Gyorgy Rhythms of the Brain