9/11 Memories and Neuroscience
As part of the opening 9/11 events at Emory there was an excellent panel discussion on memorialization moderated by the Center for Ethics, Dr. Edward Queen and led by ILA’s Dr. Angelika Bammer , and Psychology’s Dr. Marshall Duke , as well as his brother, Mike Duke, a survivor of the World Trade Center attack. After Mike Duke shared the powerful story of his experience on 9/11, Dr. Marshall Duke said that, according to his studies, the sharing of 9/11 narratives have helped people expand their range of possibility, and perhaps the possibility or faith that good things can happen even after tragedy. Sharing “oscillating narratives,” as Dr. Duke put it, wherein both positive and negative narratives inform family histories, were healthier overall for an individual’s ability to cope in life. Dr. Bammer expressed concern that in the post-9/11 world we have gained a reinforcement and cultivation of fear, an ever-growing powerful feeling of an “us vs. them” mentality. One student from the a...