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Memory reconsolidation keeps track of emotional changes, but what will explain the actual “processing”?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2015

Antonio Pascual-Leone
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario N9B 3P4, Canada. [email protected]://www1.uwindsor.ca/people/apl/
Juan Pascual-Leone
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada. [email protected]://tcolab.blog.yorku.ca/

Abstract

We question memory reconsolidation and emotional arousal as sufficient determinants of therapeutic change. Generating new feelings and meanings must be contrasted with activating and stabilizing the evolving memories that reflect those novel experiences. Some therapeutic changes are not attributable to a memory model alone. “Emotional processing” is also needed and is often an undeclared form of complex executive problem solving.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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