The Protective Role of Memory Suppression in Psychological Resilience among Young Adults with Childhood Trauma

The mechanisms underlying psychological resilience following childhood trauma remain unclear. This study investigated whether memory suppression—the ability to voluntarily inhibit unwanted memories—serves as a key mechanism promoting resilience, and examined its neural correlates. An online survey of 2,914 students assessed childhood trauma, resilience, and memory suppression ability, revealing that suppression ability fully mediated the trauma–resilience relationship. Subsequently, 91 participants (grouped by trauma exposure and resilience levels) underwent fMRI during a Think/No-Think task. Behaviorally, high-resilience individuals exhibited superior memory suppression. Neuroimaging identified the left intraparietal sulcus (IPS) as a critical neural substrate, showing enhanced suppression-related activity in high-resilience individuals and mediating the association between suppression performance and resilience. Additionally, the left IPS displayed increased functional connectivity with cognitive control regions and decreased connectivity with memory-related regions during suppression. These results establish memory suppression as a central component of resilience and highlight the left IPS as a key neural adaptor, suggesting its potential as a target for clinical intervention.