NLP and Neuroscience: Memory, Imagination and You - James Rolph

I often have cause to ask my clients how it is they 'know' their own capabilities, skills and attributes. The answer always includes some reference to past experience. And how do we 'know' our past experience? Through access to memory.

When it comes to defining who we are, what we are capable of and how we generally behave, memory is of paramount importance. If we ask ourselves "can I do it?" or "should I do it?" the answer is based upon information retrieved from memory. And this is all fine (it's called 'learning') until the beliefs that we build from these memories start to limit our potential to lead full and healthy lives.

Changing limiting beliefs is somewhat of a specialism for NLP - for over 30 years the field of NLP has been developing methodologies for freeing up and optimising our beliefs so as to liberate and create new choices and possibilities for the individual. That NLP is highly effective in this is of no surprise to practitioners and those who have experienced it's benefits, but until recently no one has really known how. In this article we will be taking a brief look at how recent research from the fields of neuroscience and memory research are related to NLP changework interventions.

New Behaviour Generator

Recent functional MRI (fMRI) studies conducted at the Institute of Neurology, University College London have revealed an interesting connection between memory and imagination - that episodic (autobiographical) memory recall and the imagining of personal future events are based in similar activity within the same brain regions.

So does this mean we can learn as much from imagination as we can from experience? This is the basis of the NLP New Behaviour Generator pattern. Instead of defining our capabilities and building our skills from memory, we do so from imagination - and it works! This is supported by studies in performance psychology: An early controlled study on the subject demonstrated that regular visualisation of technique (new behaviour) improved a basketball teams free throw shooting by 7%, leading the team in question to win eight more games that season.

The use of imagination in creating new behaviour and responses is a major component in all NLP patterns (with the possible exception of 6-Step Reframing), and one way of using it is to change our responses to past events.

Change Personal History

There are some NLP changework patterns that focus on recoding memories of past experience - the most famous of these perhaps being Change Personal History and the Fast Phobia Technique. The basis of both these patterns is the modification of memory in such a way as we leave the episodic content (what happened) relatively intact, while modifying the emotional elements.

Research by Alain Brunet from McGill University in Montreal has demonstrated that memories are malleable - upon recall they become open to modification in that the emotional content can be enhanced or toned down. This is possible without modifying the episodic content because while episodic and emotional memory functionally correlate, they are 'stored' within different parts of the brain. So we can change the memory emotionally without changing it episodically.

Brunet has developed a technique for treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) whereby the subject is encouraged to recall the traumatic memories whilst the emotional memory is chemically blocked with the beta-blocker Propranolol (Propranolol inhibits the release of stress hormones).

What is interesting is that Brunet's technique is so similar to the NLP Fast Phobia Process, only in NLP we utilise natural methods to modify the emotional content rather than drugs.

While NLP has never claimed to be a science, or asked for any validation from the world of academic research, it is useful to pay attention to new research which offers support to NLP approaches - simply because for some people this is the kind of 'evidence' they need before consider working with NLP.