Scott A Small, NY Times - It used to be thought that forgetting anything — from minor things like the name of a casual acquaintance to the more painful loss of cherished memories experienced by my patients — was caused, to varying degrees, by a failure of the brain’s memory mechanisms. But new developments in neuroscience over the past decade or so refute this simple idea.
Neurons contain what are sometimes called nanomachines that are dedicated to the construction of new memories. But scientists have recently discovered that neurons are also endowed with a completely different set of nanomachines designed for the opposite purpose: to carefully disassemble — and thus forget — components of our stored memories.
In light of this new and growing body of research, normal, everyday forgetting can no longer be thought of as a malfunction of our memory machinery; instead it should be considered a healthy and adaptive part of our brain’s normal functioning. Memory and forgetting work in unison. We depend on our memory to record, to learn and to recall, and we depend on forgetting to countervail, to sculpt and to squelch our memories. This balancing act is, as it turns out, vital for our cognitive functioning, creativity and mental health.
2 comments:
Oh goody! Me losing nouns all the time (I never did when younger) turns out to be a good thing.
I read something else on tis topic recently pointing out that really little kids lose the memory of being really little after about the age of 4. I figure who really wants to remember having their diaper changed or throwing the screaming tantrums that kids without words use to communicate discomfort.
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