The Influence of Traumatic Memories in Schizophrenia

Abstract

Since studying psychiatric disorders, Clinicians have observed and reported the abnormal nature of the presence of traumatic memories and the main symptoms they cause in PTSD, an essential aspect of which is memory encoding. The leading cause of traumatic memory flashbacks is the inability to store certain representations of the traumatic event in the hippocampus due to deficits in the hippocampus. Hippocampal deficits are also found in schizophrenia, and some studies suggest that the hippocampus is the central core of the neuropathology of schizophrenia. In contrast, sleep spindles play a vital role in sensory processing and long-term memory consolidation. Studies collected in the field of PTSD suggest that sleep spindles can alleviate mood. However, schizophrenia patients commonly have sleep disturbances and significantly reduce spindles and sleep-dependent memory consolidation. So, in conclusion, it can be speculated that mood swings cause memory encoding problems that the sleep spindles waves cannot handle.