Trauma and Memory: The Rapid Effects of High-Stress Levels on the Rohilkhand Region of Encoding and Storage

Abstract

This study explores the neurocognitive implications of traumatic stress on memory functioning in a unique socio-cultural context of the Rohilkhand region, Uttar Pradesh, India. It tests the effects of extreme stress, which are a result of communal violence, natural disasters, and extreme economic distress, on the encoding, consolidation, and retrieval of autobiographical memory. The study used a mixed-methods approach with a structured clinical examination of sixty patients with a trauma experience and two-hour phenomenological interviews of a sub-sample of twenty participants in Bareilly. Findings show that memory-related disturbances were highly prevalent: 73 per cent experienced significant intrusive memories, 65 per cent had dissociative amnesia to some parts of the traumatic experience and qualitative analysis showed that the dominant narrative form of the sensory-emotional fragments over temporal coherent narratives dominated. These results support the assumption that trauma impairs hippocampal explicit memory with hyper-activation of amygdala implicit and sensory memory systems. The paper finds that within the context of Rohilkhand, cultural models of stigma, silence and somatic expression compound neurobiology of traumatic memory, and thus require culturally sensitive, memory-centered therapy interventions in order to achieve successful trauma recovery.