Abstract

This chapter examines the biopsychology of trauma and how it influences memory. It argues that trauma has identifiable effects on the hippocampus, impairing both the neuronal structure and the function of this brain region. As a direct consequence, stress impairs various forms of memory. However, not all memories suffer this effect, and the chapter seeks to explain this point by arguing that the experience of stress causes stressful events to be recorded in a fragmented manner, with the elements of the event not woven into a coherent remembered episode. At the same time, emotion works to promote memory for the gist of an event, leading to well-encoded memories for the thematic content of an emotion event, but, again, without the coherent spatiotemporal framework needed to organize the memory.