Forgetting is a fact of life—one that many people find frustrating. But mounting evidence pushes back at the notion that a slip or lapse in our recollection is inherently bad. Indeed, forgetting can sometimes help people cope psychologically or let go of useless knowledge.
In a new study, neuroscientist Tomás Ryan of Trinity College Dublin and his colleagues have examined the fundamental biology underlying a form of forgetting we experience every day. Their work suggests that when we can’t recall an old phone number or a high school teacher’s name, those details are not necessarily lost.
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[Ryan:] The brain is different before and after learning information. That difference is accounted for by physical or chemical changes in the brain’s structure. We call a brain change that occurs during learning and that is required for memory an engram.We were able to show that in cases of retroactive interference, memories survived this type of forgetting and could be reexpressed. Nothing was wrong with those original memories, even though the mice had failed to recall them. Not only were the engrams there, but they were also healthy and functional.
