New research shows the role of forgetting information may be just as important as remembering all photos by Ken Jones. Their research is already making headlines around the world. June 21, Don Campbell. Share this page. Most Popular. U of T among seven universities globally to rank in the top 30 of 11 subjects by Times Higher Education. This makes the process of retrieving important information more efficient, as the brain uses fewer resources. Although forgetting may be frustrating, it has some fundamental benefits that aid our ability to remember.
Forgetting is also essential for our mental health. If this sound like an exaggeration, think about depression and post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD. Forgetting is essential for post-traumatic recovery.
People with difficulties forgetting things are more prone to depression and psychological trauma. This is the reason why one of the key components of treating PTSD is memory repression or forgetting. Thus, the ability to forget can be used as a protective mechanism that helps to improve mental health. Some researchers even believe that forgetting is related to ethics. If unjust thoughts continue to linger in your mind, they may finally result in unethical actions.
Forgetting helps us to get rid of the wrong kind of thoughts and actions. Forgetting is important for leaving behind previously experienced humiliations and continuing on with pride. Forgetting helps us to move towards the future, leaving the past behind. Both memory and forgetting contribute to the continuation of life, allowing us to forget the anger and pains of the past.
Without forgetting unnecessary things, we cannot create a design of our liking. We cannot tell a beautiful story without omitting some secondary details. Replication and analysis of Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve.
PLoS One. A comparison of immediate serial recall and immediate serial recognition. Can J Exp Psychol. The cost of learning: Interference effects in memory development. J Exp Psychol. Troyer A. Serial position effect. Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer, Overlearning hyperstabilizes a skill by rapidly making neurochemical processing inhibitory-dominant. Nat Neurosci. Rasch B, Born J. About sleep's role in memory.
Physiol Rev. The visual nonverbal memory trace is fragile when actively maintained, but endures passively for tens of seconds. Mem Cognit. Decay theory of immediate memory: From Brown to today Q J Exp Psychol Hove. Long-term memory for a common object.
Cog Psychol. Less we forget: retrieval cues and release from retrieval-induced forgetting. Tulving E. Cue-dependent forgetting. American Scientist. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for VerywellMind. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page.
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I Accept Show Purposes. Table of Contents View All. Table of Contents. Time's Role in Forgetting. How to Measure Forgetting. Theories About Why We Forget. How Experimental Psychology Studies Behavior. Proven Techniques to Improve Your Memory. As a result, they also have trouble imagining what might happen in the future.
The integration of new neurons green into the hippocampus red bands degrades stored memories. Credit: Jagroop Dhaliwal. Various symptoms of these conditions — including flashbacks, obsessive thoughts, depressive rumination and difficulty controlling thoughts — have been linked to an overactive hippocampus. A better understanding of how to help people make traumatic memories less intrusive could help researchers to treat some of the most intractable cases. When Anderson and his colleagues looked at what happens when volunteers suppress unwanted memories — a process he calls motivated forgetting — they found that people who reported more traumatic experiences were particularly good at repressing specific memories 5.
Understanding the cognitive psychology that underlies that ability, as well as the mental resilience that is necessary for developing it, could help to improve treatment for PTSD. If forgetting is truly a well-regulated, innate part of the memory process, he says, it makes sense that dysregulation of that process could have negative effects. More from Nature Outlooks. That question is yet to be answered. But more memory researchers are shifting their focus to examine how the brain forgets, as well as how it remembers.
In the past decade, researchers have begun to view forgetting as an important part of a whole. Memory, first and foremost, is there to serve an adaptive purpose. It endows us with knowledge about the world, and then updates that knowledge. This article is part of Nature Outlook: The brain , an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content. Berry, J. Neuron 74 , — PubMed Article Google Scholar.
Migues, P. Akers, K. Science , — Schmitz, T. Nature Commun. Hulbert, J. Download references. Technology Feature 09 NOV
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