Do Our Brains Store Sadness More Readily Than Happiness?

My local news station has been the topic of several Mental Health Notes posts over the past couple of weeks, hasn’t it?

Why stop the pattern?

As I was sitting here listening to the morning news (I tune in on my office radio), I heard a report about the continuing psychological effects of 9/11. My ears perked up – not only because I always pay attention to mental health-related news, but because I just read and posted about the matter earlier this week.

The report covered basically everything the ScientificAmerican.com article, Continuing Effects of 9/11: High brain activity in people affected by the tragedy could lead to later health problems, covered; however, it touched more on research dealing with why we remember so many details about where we are, what we’re doing, etc. when such events take place.

This especially sparked interest since I touched on that as well, although the ScientificAmerican.com article didn’t.

For whatever reason, the news’ website doesn’t mention this report and since I can’t remember exactly what was said, I’ll just have to give a very rough summary.

It basically boiled down to scientists/doctors performing MRIs and finding that the particular part of the brain (the part that deals with memory, I believe) tends to store emotions such as sadness and despair.

I tend to remember many details about very exciting and happy events in my life, too. I wonder how those emotions play into this part of the brain?