A study has found that moderate forgetfulness helps the brain to focus more efficiently on what it considers important.
A team of researchers at Bond University in Australia used MRI to observe brain activity when people were trying to remember images of objects.
They asked some students to lie inside an MRI machine and remember pictures of objects such as a backpack, a clock or a cupcake in a variety of different settings, such as a gym, a laundry room or a garden.
Half of these objects had already been shown to them the day before this. This allowed the researchers to compare the brain’s response to familiar and unfamiliar objects. In the next experiment, the researchers swapped out the context in which some of the items were placed and found that the subjects had more difficulty remembering the unfamiliar items.
The researchers saw that the hippocampus region of the brain showed different activity when the subjects forgot the items. The hippocampus is a brain region that scientists have found to be associated with memory function.
The study says the finding provides new insight into how people’s memory systems enhance effectiveness, meaning they believe it is the way the brain takes to work more efficiently – remembering only the very necessary information.
There is a condition called hypermnesia (hyperthymesia). Patients can remember almost everything in their lifetime, causing their brains to have so much information that they have difficulty focusing on a single task.
It seems that proper forgetfulness can help people clear their brains of unnecessary load and improve their brain efficiency.
Researchers say that now people are already using retinal implants, assistive listening implants, and probably in the next one or two hundred years, people will use memory-assisting implants to improve their memories according to their needs. To achieve this step, it is first necessary to understand how the memory system actually works, and this study takes a small step forward.
This study was recently published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
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