The Science of Nostalgia

As I was thinking about my thesis for my essay on Never Let Me Go, I began to question what the science behind nostalgia was. Why do some people have more or less nostalgia, and why do we feel nostalgia for certain moments rather than others? According to Alan R. Hirsh, author of "Nostalgia: a Neuropsychiatric Understanding," nostalgia is not an emotional state, it is "a longing for a sanitized impression of the past." From this article, I learned that nostalgia comes from a sort of filtered memory, where we choose to rid our brains of certain negative parts of a moment and remember it as being entirely positive, or sometimes perfect. One other interesting fact from the article is that nostalgia has not always been viewed as a good thing. In the 17th century, a Swiss physician named Johannes Hofer used the term nostalgia to describe yearning for the past; he considered it to be a cerebral disease. I would suggest reading the article if this at all interests you! It is a very interesting read.