The act of administering punishment provides relief from negative emotions as it activates reward centres in the brain [ 7].
We provide the first systematic comparison of the temporal dynamics of punishment- versus relief-memory.
Using Drosophila, we compare punishment- and relief-memories in terms of their temporal decay and sensitivity to retrograde amnesia.
The differences we find in both these parameters suggest a dissociation of the mechanisms underlying punishment- and relief-memories.
The relative strengths of such punishment- and relief-learning can be crucial for the adaptive organization of behaviour in the aftermath of painful events.
This experiment used a 2 × 2 experimental design (figure 2 a), such that flies underwent either punishment- or relief-training, and then either did or did not receive cold-amnesia at 60 min after training.
This experiment used a 2 × 5 experimental design (figure 1 a), such that flies underwent either punishment- or relief-training, and were then tested after retention periods of 25, 50, 75,240 min, or 24 h.
If, within a single subject, the events before and after a traumatic episode were to induce punishment- and relief-memory, our finding that both these forms of memory differ in strength and susceptibility to retrograde amnesia may be of practical importance: while trying to erase punishment-memory, one may unwittingly also erase relief-memory.
Based on early descriptive work by the psychiatrist Zbigniew J. Lipowski (1924 1997), eight categories of meaning which would influence the choice of coping strategies were devised as prevalent in our culture, i.e., challenge, value, enemy, punishment, weakness, loss, relief, and strategy [ 6].
Although the decision had been made in December 1967 and Westmoreland was made Army Chief of Staff, many saw his relief as punishment for the entire Tet debacle.
