New ways of looking at memory function: certain traumatic memories function like viruses, replicating themselves.

Abstract

By the process of natural selection, life on earth spreads in all directions, finding niches favorable for survival. Some niches are harmful to another plant or animal (parasitism). This universal survival strategy applies to all living things, and apparently even non-living things such as viruses and prions. The same pattern may occur with immaterial entities such as memories. Traumatic memories mimic virus behavior in many ways such as infecting, spreading, occasionally becoming latent, and even reproducing themselves. Patients with past traumatic experiences are still "infected" with pathogenic memories. The experience remains ever-present in the patient's neural pathways and may even grow via a feedback loop in which each episode of remembering produces a stress hormone response. Under this model, doctors might view and treat patients with a history of trauma as persons infected with latent memories which periodically break out and cause new damage.