Many people view forgetting as an inconvenience, and if it occurs extensively, they associate it with neurodegenerative diseases. However, some evidence suggests that nonpathological forgetting is an adaptive and active part of learning and memory maintenance.
“The environment is changing, and to adapt to an environment that is constantly changing, we need to update our memories; and updating our memories also means forgetting,” said Livia Autore, a neuroscientist and postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Tomás Ryan at the Trinity College Dublin and author of a study published in Cell Reports. The findings indicate that forgetting is an active process that is important for the ability to remember and that it serves as a basis for understanding altered memory capacity.
“We always suspected that maybe [memories] can be put into a dormant state and be revised, or changed, or brought back up,” [Jacob Berry, a neurobiologist at the University of Alberta] said. “To really see that at the engram cell level really helps confirm that, and I think it will open up the field to looking into what dormant memories are. What makes them different than a regular memory that’s easily expressed? And I think those kinds of things can have impacts in understanding lots of disorders where there’s a lot of forgetting.”
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