ArticleNature communications2021
Finding positive meaning in memories of negative events adaptively updates memory.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 71 citations in OpenAlex.
- Randomized Trial on the Effects of a Group EMDR Intervention on Narrative Complexity and Specificity of Autobiographical Memories: A Path Analytic and Supervised Machine-Learning Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Trial
- The causal role of the bilateral ventrolateral prefrontal cortices on emotion regulation of social feedback.Human brain mapping · 2022Trial
- Autobiographical memory retrieval in the context of self-schema updating: Does specific recall have power?Memory & cognition · 2026Article
- Emotion regulation modulates subsequent control of unwanted memories.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Article
- Empowered listening: Self-selected music's role in uplifting emotions during stress.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Dissociable memory modulation mechanisms facilitate fear amnesia at different timescales.eLife · 2025Article
- Controlling unwanted memories: A conceptual review grounded in the process model of emotion regulation.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Review
- Targeting memory of embedded positive verbal content indirectly modulates negative visual memory.iScience · 2025Article
- How Fear Memory is Updated: From Reconsolidation to Extinction?Neuroscience bulletin · 2025Review
- Emotion Regulation Under Stress: A Social Processing and Memory Perspective.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2025Review
- Update on "Emotion and autobiographical memory": 14 years of advances in understanding functions, constructions, and consequences.Physics of life reviews · 2024Review
- Hooking the Self Onto the Past: How Positive Autobiographical Memory Retrieval Benefits People With Social Anxiety.Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2024Article
- Aversive memories can be weakened during human sleep via the reactivation of positive interfering memories.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Counterfactual thinking induces different neural patterns of memory modification in anxious individuals.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Post-retrieval stress impairs subsequent memory depending on hippocampal memory trace reinstatement during reactivation.Science advances · 2024Article
- Individuals who see the good in the bad engage distinctive default network coordination during post-encoding rest.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Writing to your past-self can make you feel better.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Randomized trial on the effects of an EMDR intervention on traumatic and obsessive symptoms during the COVID-19 quarantine: a psychometric study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Peer facilitation of emotion regulation in adolescence.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2023Review
- Critical tests of fuzzy trace theory in brain and behavior: uncertainty across time, probability, and development.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Finding positive meaning in past negative memories is associated with enhanced mental health. Yet it remains unclear whether it leads to updates in the memory representation itself. Since memory can be labile after retrieval, this leaves the potential for modification whenever its reactivated. Across four experiments, we show that positively reinterpreting negative memories adaptively updates them, leading to the re-emergence of positivity at future retrieval. Focusing on the positive aspects after negative recall leads to enhanced positive emotion and changes in memory content during recollection one week later, remaining even after two months. Consistent with a reactivation-induced reconsolidation account, memory updating occurs only after a reminder and twenty four hours, but not a one hour delay. Multi-session fMRI showed adaptive updates are reflected in greater hippocampal and ventral striatal pattern dissimilarity across retrievals. This research highlights the mechanisms by which updating of maladaptive memories occurs through a positive emotion-focused strategy.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.