Tiffany 13 - Forgetting
"'What is memory without forgetting?' asks Oliver Hardt, a cognitive psychologist studying the neurobiology of memory at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. 'It’s impossible,' he says. 'To have proper memory function, you have to have forgetting.'" Memory is a very intriguing thing, but forgetting is an aspect of memory that is often overlooked. Forgetting is often assumed to be "a passive process in which memories, unused, decay over time." However, researchers have recently put forth the idea that "the brain is built to forget."
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In 2012, neuroscientist Ron Davis uncovered evidence of forgetting in fruit flies and found that dopamine is essential to forgetting. Several years later, Hardt discovered similarities in rats. Many other researchers had parallel discoveries, and they were able to come to the conclusion that "[f]orgetting . . . 'is not a failure of memory, but a function of it.'" The hippocampus is an integral part of memory formation, but it is not where long-term memories are stored. As Paul Frankland, a neuroscientist, said, forgetting is "something that evolved to aid learning. The environment is changing constantly and, to survive, animals must adapt to new situations. Allowing fresh information to overwrite the old helps them to achieve that."
Researchers believe that human brains work in similar ways. Our brains are designed to forget information to free up room to learn new things. Forgetting often comes with a negative connotation, but it is in fact "a very important component to the value of memory." It can be an annoyance at times, but it is the deliberate design of our brains, and serves as an integral part of our memory.
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Hey Tiffany, the idea of forgetting really is important once you think about its function. If we really remember every single information we have ever stumbled upon, it must be very difficult for our brain to process all those memories. I think one good analogy to compare this function will be to deleting files on our computer. If we have too much files, our computer becomes laggy and slow. Because so, we have to delete files that we no longer need to clean up space. Similarly, our brain would require the same function. If there is too much memories, we will be too busy recalling which memory we need than actually using the memory we remember. Overall, the act of forgetting really is an integral portion of our memory functionalities.
ReplyDeleteHey Tiffany! It is interesting to think that forgetting is good. However I don’t like thinking that forgetting my password for the 3rd time today is secretly good. That aside, it is interesting learning the evolutionary purpose of forgetting since intuitively we would think that remembering would always be advantageous for any given living being. This reminds me of that quote from Sherlock Holmes where he compares his brain to an attic, and he keeps only what he actually needs in there and regularly purges what he doesn’t need.
ReplyDeleteHey Tiffany, the design of forgetting information to make space to learn other material makes me wonder if there is a specific limit to how much our brain can store information. Nowadays I have been forgetting a lot more than before and I wonder if it has something to do with my brain having reached a certain capacity, thus not being able to retain the more trivial information. While forgetting at times can be irritating, your blog helped me understand there is actually a purpose to us forgetting and how vital it is to how our memory functions. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteTiffany, this was certainly an interesting and thought provoking blog post to read. When speaking about memory or memorization no one even talks about the opposite part to it, forgetting. Forgetting is an idea that scares many of us, including me. When it comes to memories that I have created with my friends and family, I am scared that I will forget these memories once I go to college and forget the happiness I shared with them. Reading this blog post has made me realize that forgetting is a past of life and something that needs to occur in order to create new memories. Thank you for allowing me to self reflect.
ReplyDeleteHi Tiffany! Your blog offered an interesting way to look at memory as something that could not exist if people do not forget. Many times I think of memories and forgetting as polar opposites, but I have come to the realization that they are actually very similar as one can not exist without the other. I feel like my brain has endless memories stored inside it, but only a few are brought to my consciousness at a certain time. The idea is that human brains need to forget to make room for new ideas. Although I wonder how can people truly forget if they have to remember what they forgot to know that they forgot something. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHey Tiffany! It was quite fascinating to read about how remembering and forgetting work hand in hand, despite being completely opposite forces. Well I guess every action has an equal and opposite reaction, memory would be no exception to this rule. There is much we have yet to understand about how the human brain works, but I guess we’re always getting closer. This phenomenon makes a lot of sense too, given that there is no way we can retain all the information we learn on a daily basis. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi Tiffany, I have noticed that for all the positive things that happen in life, there is always a negative so that we enjoy the things we have and never take them for granted. Some examples are when we have free time. If we were to always have free time, it would be less relaxing and unenjoyable without having days where we are constantly working. As for our memories, if we did not forget things, we would be overwhelmed by our thoughts and I could imagine how difficult it would be to concentrate.
ReplyDeleteHi Tiffany! This is a really cool and interesting concept to think about! I've certainly always thought that forgetting was essentially similar to a "failure" in memory, or that they just decayed over time like you mentioned, but it's fascinating to think that our brains are built to forget. After reading your blog, I realized that forgetting and remembering pretty much go hand in hand. It is definitely not beneficial for our brains to continue to pile up old memories without making room for new ones, so there are definitely positives to forgetting as well. While we sometimes may forget memories we want to remember and remember the memories we want to forget, we need to have this balance. Forgetting is an idea that I'm sure many people have tended to associate with a negative context, and while it can have consequences sometimes, I'm glad that I learned the benefits of being able to forget!
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