I played with marbles as a kid. Did you?
Now I’m wondering if those little round stones can have an impact on memory and emotions.
According to a new study published in Cognition, simple motor functioning like playing with marbles may trigger memories.
Daniel Casasanto, PhD (Donders Center for Brain, Cognition, & Behavior, Nijmegen, New Zealand) and Katinka Dijkstra, PhD (Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands) looked at psycholinguistics – how language and bodily experience can shape the mind.
When talking about the negative and the positive, individuals most often use spatial metaphors (e.g. “on top of the world” or “down in the dumps”). If we use spatial metaphors to discuss emotional states, do these metaphors also make us think about the emotions?
Casasanto and Kijkstra wanted to see whether seemingly meaningless motor functions could make people remember the good and bad.
They first had participants move marbles up and down while recounting select memories. Participants spoke more quickly of positive memories when their marbles were going up and of negative memories when their marbles were moving down.
In a second experiment, individuals continued to move marbles up and down while being asked neutral questions (e.g. “What happened today in school?”).
Answers to these neutral questions were at least in part determined by the direction in which their marble was traveling. A majority of participants recounted positive memories when moving marbles up and negative when moving marbles down.
This research may show that motor functions play a role in helping us retrieve memories, both good and bad.
But why do we care?
This could be critical, not only for the average individual, but especially for clients who have endured trauma and overwhelmingly negative experiences in their lives. Obviously more research needs to be done.
Practitioners are almost on fire right now, integrating the latest research on neuroplasticity and neurogenesis into the treatments that we use with our patients.
That’s why NICABM created the teleseminar series on The New Brain Science.
Come join us. You can sign up here.
Love to see more people using marble therapy. I made a product using marbles, and freezing them, it helped my mother with alot of her aches and pains, very soothing. Idea caught on and became popular.
My brother recommended I would possibly like this blog. He was once totally right. This put up truly made my day. You cann’t imagine just how much time I had spent for this info! Thank you!
A really very intriguing write-up! I’ll try to track that continues here! Thank you.
Hi Marguerite, it’s not so much the idea that movement is associated with memories is new. What’s new is that we have some research backing it up. Research is hard, and it takes time. It’s important that psychotherapy work hand in hand with research and when we get the research, it’s time to celebrate and make sure that everyone knows about it.
Ruth
As always, Ruth, thank you so much for sharing this research! I’ve been mulling it over today from my personal frame of reference as a person who struggled with complex pts for years, who has recovered and is healing on deeper levels than I ever imagined possible, thanks in large part to Guided Imagery. The freeze response I experienced so profoundly throughout my life and which, for me, took precedence over flight or fight, became finally my greatest adversary. Movement in companionship with the guided imagery, et al, I have felt intuitively has played a significant role in my recovery.
There are many pieces to this journey and NICABM has been a key reference point for me for many years. Your willingness to explore alternative treatment modalities and your insistence on documented, sound science is so appreciated.
I am the daughter of an amazing scientist/doc (deceased) who was a remarkable intuitive as well…today he would be considered a medical intuitive. He would respect and admire you as much as I! Thanks once again!
Very interesting. I am reminded of the story of Carl Jung and “remembered wellness”. Short version: He was quite ill as a young man and sent his assistant down to the lake to bring up a pan of sludge. He sat and ran his fingers through, as he had as a child . Accordingly, he reported that his body remembered the pleasant feelings of playing similarly by the lake and he was able to completely recover.
Thankyou Ruth for these exciting teachings. Most timely!!
I am concerned that it may be news to the psychology profession that micro-motor movements give access to brain memories. There is plenty of experience with this in Feldenkrais, bioenergetic work of Steve Levine, and countless other sources. Could it be the usual compartmentalizatiion of professions, where obvious information is overlooked and lost due to, for lack of a better encompassing word, ignorance.