Forget everything you know about memory. Emerging research threatens to rewrite our
understanding of two critical skills – our ability to remember, and our ability
to forget.
First memory.
New research out of Germany maintains that as we age, our cognitive
abilities don’t necessarily become weaker, it’s simply that that we have more data
to sort through, thus the delay in retrieving it.
And forgetting? A
variety of reports insist that learning to forget (i.e., “memory extinction”) is
one of the more useful skills that we can develop. Yet, it remains undervalued and rarely
taught.
Before we dive in, we’ll also explore these memorable
questions:
·
Who forgets more, women or men?
·
How close are we to developing a pill to forget
bad memories?
We turn first to the age-old notion that as we mature,
our memory fades. Explains Dr. Michael
Ramscar of Tubingen University:
“The brains of older people do not get weak. On the contrary, they simply
know more.”
Ramscar, who led a team of researchers, maintains that
most standard cognitive measures are flawed. As quoted in www.psypost.com,
Ramscar said: “The human brain works slower in old age, but only because we
have stored more information over time.” Without question, accumulated
knowledge poses a challenge to memory, but researchers maintain that we
shouldn’t confuse “processing time” with memory itself. Added Ramscar, as
quoted in psypost.com:
“Imagine someone who knows two people’s birthdays and can recall them
almost perfectly. Would you really want to say that person has a better memory
than a person who knows the birthdays of 2,000 people, but can ‘only’ match the
right person to the right birthday nine times out of ten?”
Ramscar’s team added that standardized vocabulary tests
“massively underestimate the size of adult vocabularies,” according to
psypost.com.
Learning to
(forgive and) forget
Imagine if you were able to let go of bad memories, or
personal insults. Imagine how much happier you might be. This, of course, is the art or forgetting –
the ability to forget traumatic memories or personal judgments that, for
whatever reason, remain in your psyche.
Explains Ingrid Wickelgren, in her piece for Scientific
American:
“The ability to repress is quite useful. Those who cannot do this well
tend to let thoughts stick in their mind. They ruminate, which can pave a path
to depression. Weak restraints on memory may similarly impede the emotional
recovery of trauma victims.”
She later adds:
“The ability to forget, however, is not immutable. If you practice
applying your mental brakes, unwanted memories tend to fade. Thus, contrary to
conventional wisdom, suppression therapy might someday aid in the treatment of
mood and cognitive disorders. Because intentional forgetting depends on
controlling which thoughts and memories seep into our awareness, the science of
rejected recollections might also help scientists understand consciousness.”
In other news:
The Forgetting
Pill: MIT scientists last fall reported that they’ve identified a gene
(Tet1) that plays a critical role in "memory extinction," the process
by which old memories are replaced by new ones. The hope is that if researchers
can find a way to medically boost Tet1, it may be possible to help those
suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or addiction.
Men vs. Women: A 48,000 person study out of Norway found that
men, on average, report that they are more forgetful than women. Said lead
author Professor Jostein Holmen, as quoted in spring.org.uk: “It was surprising
to see that men forget more than women. This has not been documented before. It
was also surprising to see that men are just as forgetful whether they are 30
or 60 years old. The results were unambiguous.” The study did not measure
memory, but instead focused exclusively on people’s perception about their own memory.
Said spring.org.uk: “Still, the importance of looking at subjective memory
impairment is to see if it might predict cognitive problems in the future, like
dementia.”
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