Associations Part II: Emotional Memory

    When I started working out, I was given some tips by a friend, one of which intrigued me. He said, "Pick a selection of music that you will only listen to while working out." I asked him why, and he said, "I don't know why, but if you listen to the music while not working out, it will mess with your brain." I got to thinking, I have had that kind of experience before. I was going on this long bike trip and all I listened to was Iron Maiden, well a few days after the trip I was listening to Iron Maiden and I had sudden flush of the emotion I felt while biking and the urge to bike. It wore off when I listen to them three days in a row, but I surprised me that my brain had made the association between the music, my emotion while listening to the music, and the urge to bike. Have you ever heard a song that you hadn't heard in a while and you have the sudden remembrance of the location in which you originally heard the song and my emotion. I first had that experience when I listened to "Kiss from a Rose" by Seal, and I remembered being in Tennessee in my families old beat up minivan and it was on the radio. The rush of memory was overwhelming , but I loved the feeling!
    Here is another way the brain makes emotional associations (which I lightly touched upon in my last "Association" post), where a negative experience ties in emotionally with a surrounding. We've all had the arguments where they left an imprint in your psyche, where your brain takes a little snapshot of the emotion, the location, and the person arguing with. This is probably the worst ability the subconscious uses, because of the imprint it leaves on people and places.