After a bereavement, some people unconsciously suppress thoughts about their dead relative. Now the process has been observed while someone lies in a brain scanner.
The findings may shed light on people鈥檚 different coping styles after loss, says Noam Schneck of Columbia Engineering in New York.
The brain scanner involved is known as an fMRI machine, which can reveal the activity of different parts of the brain, based on patterns of blood flow. This approach can enable a degree of mind-reading, and can be used to detect when a person is thinking of certain people or objects.
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Schneck鈥檚 team worked with 29 people who had recently lost a spouse or close relative. They were shown pictures of their loved one while in the scanner to determine the characteristic signature of brain activity linked with that person.
The team also worked out the brain signature for trying to squash down unwanted thoughts, by getting them to do a tricky mental task requiring thought suppression. This involved having to name colours that words are written in, while ignoring the colour that the word spells out 鈥� for instance the word 鈥済reen鈥� in a blue font.
Participants were next given an unrelated and boring task to do for twenty minutes to encourage mind-wandering. They were also asked throughout the task if they had thought of their dead relative in the past 30 seconds.
In about a third of the answers, people said they had had such a thought 鈥� and their brain activity tallied with this. In the rest, they said they hadn鈥檛; but sometimes during these periods, the team saw patterns of brain activity representing both the relative and the act of thought suppression, suggesting they were unconsciously repressing thoughts of the dead person.
鈥淵ou have this unconscious process stopping things from getting into your awareness,鈥� says Schneck.
