Forgetting Isn’t a Simple Process:
“Do you recall the last time you actively tried to forget something unpleasant? Maybe it was an embarrassing moment, or Britney Spears’ weekend wedding that wasn’t.
New research suggests your brain is quite busy when you take on the task of un-remembering. The process, in fact, is similar to the mental effort required to stop your arm or leg from moving.” —Yahoo! News
Related: Research reveals brain has biological mechanism to block unwanted memories:
“For the first time, researchers at Stanford University and the University of Oregon have shown that a biological mechanism exists in the human brain to block unwanted memories.
The findings, to be published Jan. 9 in the journal Science, reinforce Sigmund Freud’s controversial century-old thesis about the existence of voluntary memory suppression.
“The big news is that we’ve shown how the human brain blocks an unwanted memory, that there is such a mechanism and it has a biological basis,” said Stanford psychology Professor John Gabrieli, a co-author of the paper titled “Neural Systems Underlying the Suppression of Unwanted Memories.” “It gets you past the possibility that there’s nothing in the brain that would suppress a memory – that it was all a misunderstood fiction.”
The experiment showed that people are capable of repeatedly blocking thoughts of experiences they don’t want to remember until they can no longer retrieve the memory, even if they want to, Gabrieli explained. ” —EurekAlerts
Also: Unmaking Memories: “In the sci-fi thriller Paycheck, an engineer has his memory erased after completing a sensitive job. Scientific American.com spoke with leading neurobiologist James McGaugh to find out just how close scientists are to controlling recall.”
