Good news: Being Forgetful Means Your Brain Is Functioning Properly

Being forgetful may be a sign of your brain working properly. A new study suggest that not remembering trivial details may actually be a sign your brain is better at separating the wheat from the chaff.

1.What is forgetting by definition?

Forgetting is the apparent loss or modification of information already encoded and stored in an individual's long-term memory. It is a spontaneous or gradual process in which old memories are unable to be recalled from memory storage.

Forgetting functions have been extensively analyzed in the past years. A recent study found that the growth of new neurons in the hippocampus, the part of our brain associated with memory, seemed to promote forgetting. The purpose was to make room for more important information, and do away with more useless things.

2.Why is that a good thing?

People tend to idealize persons who can smash quiz games and recall random information very easily and without effort. However, the point of memory is not being able to remember who won the football world championship in 1990 (... by the way: it was Germany ;-)...). The point of memory is to make you an intelligent person who can make smart decisions given the circumstances, and an important aspect in helping you do that is being able to forget some information.

There are several benefits to the idea of forgetfulness being rather useful. For one, the brain wants to get rid of old useless information, like an old password or your ex-partner’s favorite color. If it’s constantly bringing up old things you don’t need anymore, it’s harder to make a concrete decision.

It also makes it easier for us to generalize previous events, like multiple visits to a shop, rather than remembering every specific detail from each visit.

This is backed by an experiment where mice looked for the exit to a maze. If the exit was moved, the mice found it more quickly if they were drugged to forget the location of the old exit.

So next time you’re struggling at the pub quiz, fear not. Your brain might just be waiting for more useful information.

For further information:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11983-forgetfulness-is-a-tool-of-the-brain/

https://www.wired.com/2007/06/forgetfulness_i/

https://www.utoronto.ca/news/why-forgetting-really-important-memory-u-t-research