Forgetting May be Part of the Remembering Process

CFTM writes "The New York Times is running an interesting article about how human memory works and the theorized adaptive nature of forgetfulness". From the article, "Whether drawing a mental blank on a new A.T.M. password, a favorite recipe or an old boyfriend, people have ample opportunity every day to curse their own forgetfulness. But forgetting is also a blessing, and researchers reported on Sunday that the ability to block certain memories reduces the demands on the brain when it is trying to recall something important. The study, appearing in the journal Nature Neuroscience, is the first to record visual images of people's brains as they suppress distracting memories. The more efficiently that study participants were tuning out irrelevant words during a word-memorization test, the sharper the drop in activity in areas of their brains involved in recollection. Accurate remembering became easier, in terms of the energy required."

Comments

Why is my mouse pointer over the submit button?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope I remember to smoke more pot.

Re:Why is my mouse pointer over the submit button?

[bobo mahoney]

If you can remember where your bong is, wait I can't remeber where my lighter is.

Give me a break Slashdot editors

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop making excuses for dupes.

The question I've always had about memory...

[Scoth]

The question I've always had is more along the lines of the filing system - there are times that I can't remember any part of something until someone reminds me of some small part, and it all comes flooding back. That means it was all in there somewhere, I just couldn't find it. I'm wondering what might cause that, and what might be done to improve it. Or, as the article is saying, perhaps we're not meant to?

Re:The question I've always had about memory...

[dabraun]

there are times that I can't remember any part of something until someone reminds me of some small part, and it all comes flooding back.

You needed the value of the index column, then you were able to retrieve the entire row. Simple as that.

Re:The question I've always had about memory...

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps we're not meant to?

Meant to by whom? God?

Personally, I prefer intelligent adaptation. This discovery (though it hardly sounds modern, I remember reading a summary of a hypothesis along these lines written by Freud) suggests that the problem isn't one if reducing a limitation or pushing a boundary so much as more intelligently directing a heuristic. The brain suppresses memories that it deems irrelevant to the task at hand, which is a good thing. The problem comes when it mis-assesses the relevance value of certain bits of information. The questions we should be asking are, "what might cause that mis-assessment, and how can it be remedied once it is caused?"

My hypothesis would be that there are two causes of the mis-assessment:

1) Some unrelated thoughts that are simultaneously happening in the brain cause the recall operation to favor a different set of relevancies.
2) Some inappropriate associations are linking the desired information with something that is very irrelevant to the data at hand, thus causing it to be "drug down."

Based on this hypothesis, responding to a drawn-blank would involve two steps:

1) Consciously clear your mind (this takes practice...study zen...it helps) and re-state the question you are trying to answer (state it out loud, that helps too).

2) Try to think of (and out loud ask yourself) questions about things that would clearly be associated with the desired bit of information. If you are trying to remember a phone number, think of things like the face of the person who you are trying to call, the image of a telephone on which you previously called the person, perhaps the image of the place where you stored the number previously (post-it note or PDA or whatever).

Don't work harder, work smarter!

Re:The question I've always had about memory...

[Timesprout]

Yeah but usally when I do a

SELECT what_happened FROM drunken_weekend_haze WHERE night = 'saturday';

It's followed immediately by OMG I did what!!!!!! Followed in turn by

DELETE FROM drunken_weekend_haze WHERE embarrassing_episode = True;

Then when people say "Good weekend?" I can almost truthfully respond "Yeah but I got pissed and I can't remember a whole lot of it"

Re:The question I've always had about memory...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately your friend has a transaction log and can help you rebuild the deleted records later.

Re:The question I've always had about memory...

[buswolley]

I happen to be a memory researcher at a major University. I also happen to be on a project very similar to the one in the article. However, we are doing the fMRI imaging with children of different ages, as a developmental study. We also piloted adults, and replicating results similar to the ones in the article. Interesting. Of course, I cannot speak about the research in much detail. Journals don't like that much.

As to your question, I could tell you a lot about why this is so. 1st, cued recall is much easier than free recall. The cue helps stimulate the appropriate associative networks facilitating recall. In particular, a primary focus of mine is cued recall, or recognition. I use the dual process model of recognition: Recollection and Familiarity.

Familiarity, as experienced, is the feeling of familiarity we get when we see something that we've seen before, aside from actually remembering anything about it, which is recollection.

I highly recommend the seminal: Yonelinas. A.P. (2002). The nature of recollection and familiarity: A review of 30 years of research. Journal of Memory and Language, 46, 441-517.

You can get it here: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/Yonelinas/index _files/page0003.htm

Re:The question I've always had about memory...

[SeekerDarksteel]

In artificial neural networks, there are structures called auto-associative memory networks. The networks are "trained" on certain patterns, then when it receives one of those patterns as input, it outputs a pattern closer to the pattern it was trained on. If you make it recursive (and your network is good enough), you can take as input a pattern that contains only a fragment of one of the patterns it was trained on and get as output the pattern you trained on. It's quite likely that something like that is going on inside our brains to store memories in some fashion, but on a far more complex scale than we can describe at this point.

Re:The question I've always had about memory...

[Jarjarthejedi]

Only on /. does a joke comparing the brain to an Array, or anything in programming, get modding insightful...

Re:The question I've always had about memory...

[syousef]

Of course, I cannot speak about the research in much detail. Journals don't like that much

You're a scientist and a researcher working at a (public??) university but can't speak about what you do. What's wrong with this picture? Rampant unchecked capitalism is little better than rampant unchecked communism.

Re:The question I've always had about memory...

[buswolley]

Of course, I agree wholeheartedly. Researchers could speak of it all they want, but doing so may jeopardize their chances of being published. Journals like to have the first press release.

Re:The question I've always had about memory...

[yali]

You're a scientist and a researcher working at a (public??) university but can't speak about what you do.

That's an overstatement. The poster was referring to a specific study that has been submitted to a journal. Journals consider their mission to publish original data and findings, and won't accept stuff that has been previously published. Some interpret "prior publication" quite broadly to include many forms of dissemination of findings, including stuff posted on the web. (This is prevalent in psychology, where there is no equivalent to arXiv.org for preprints.) It's not right, and it's changing slowly, but until it gets better researchers have to play along.

Moreover, there are potential ethical issues with disseminating findings that have not yet been subjected to peer review. Many scientists consider peer review to be an integral part of the scientific process, because it provides a form of quality control and ensures a minimum standard for findings and conclusions that the scientific community will communicate the the public. Some publicity-hungry researchers violate this, but many others do care about it.

Once the study in question has been peer reviewed and accepted for publication, I'm sure the poster will be happy to tell you all about it.

Re:The question I've always had about memory...

[Torvaun]

Now, that makes all sorts of sense. My brother, my father and I are all ADHD. We are also the kings of pretty much any trivia contest you care to mention. I can recall massive selections of dialogue from movies verbatim after a single viewing. I've been going off of the assumption that it was the result of random hyperfocusing, but it could be the failure to forget.

Re:The question I've always had about memory...

[smallfries]

Although it also depends on the subject. In CS it is common to publish work three times, firstly at a workshop, then at a conference, and finally at a journal. Each level of the pyramid is happy as long as the work hasn't been that high before. Even before any of these it is common to release a tech report or an eprint to "get a flag in the ground". Part of the difference in culture comes from the turn around time on research.

The ethical issues are still the same though. Most "blind" review is not blind after a little googling, although preprints of the work do make that a little easier. Work in CS doesn't have such a binary quality control. There is an ordering between the different types of publications, but it isn't as important as the quality of the venue. I can think of some really prestigious workshops with 60:1 acceptance ratios against some pretty crappy journals that are 3:1.

Re:The question I've always had about memory...

[replicant108]

In any mnemonic system, linking is a key component.

The assumption is that any given item of information can only be reliably retrieved if it is linked to something already known.

In computer science, the concept of the linked mist is probably most analogous.

Clearly an index plays a vital role in such a system.

Re:The question I've always had about memory...

[rgravina]

In computer science, the concept of the linked mist is probably most analogous.

Ah yes... the good ol' linked mist!

I forgot what I was going to post

[Timesprout]

I'm sure I will have remembered by the time the dupe gets here though

Psychology I gleaned from Computer Science

[CrazyJim1]

This is all stuff I figured out. Despite the fact I thought it up, it could still be wrong.

If you spend processes on thinking, you can lose your process of memory. Ie: You can get distracted if something comes up and you forget what you were doing. Or you walk into a room thinking about the football game, and forget why you came into the room to begin with. I think smart people who are in a constant line of thought as such they sacrifice less important parts of their memory and only remember big things. Now this article makes me even happier because I always think and hardly take time to remember.

Want to hear the funny part? I don't remember what the article actually says. I think it said that if you forget trivial stuff that the more important stuff will be easier to remember. I'll go re-read it now.

Reminds me of an old joke

[grub]

An old couple both have Alzheimer's. One day they're watching TV and an ad for a burger place comes on.
Man says: "Hey, want to make some burgers?"
Woman says: "Sure, what to you want on yours?
Man: "I want lettuce, tomatoes and onions. Don't forget; lettuce, tomatoes and onions."
Woman: "Got it. Lettuce, tomatoes and onions."
A good hour goes by and she finally comes from the kitchen and hands her husband a plate of bacon and eggs. He says "You idiot! You forgot the toast!"

Simpsons

[_pi-away]

"Remember when I took that home wine-making course and forgot how to drive?"

"That's because you were drunk!"

"And how!"

Important Post

[rlp]

Personally, I think that ...

Exception in thread "Surf" java.lang.NullPointerException
at Slashdot.Post(Slashdot.java:1061)
at Slashdot.Read(Slashdot.java:75)
at MyBrain.main(MyBrain.java:4038)

Evolutionary Adaption?

[Nutty_Irishman]

Learning to forget is probably more beneficial to humanity in the long run. How many times have you sat around and wasted time thinking about things you wish you could forget (ex's, deceased family members, disturbing conversations, etc.). At times, learning to forget is exactly what we need to move on with our lives.

Re:Evolutionary Adaption?

[Tablizer]

How many times have you sat around and wasted time thinking about things you wish you could forget (ex's, deceased family members, disturbing conversations, etc.).

Goatse

Contradiction

[DynaSoar]

The primary study quoted supposedly shows less brain activity (in reality it shows less oxy/CO2 swapping, which is frequently mistaken for a measure of brain activity) when some memories are suppressed. Then they quote Anderson (U. of Oregon) who more properly identifies such suppression as active inhibition. Active inhibition is a form of activity. It should show up as a "lighting up" on the fMRI scan. In light of this, what the primary study shows is nothing. It's a failure to find active inhibition. Some results are notable by their absence. Saying your results show something when they in fact fail to is entirely different.

"Recall" itself is a misleading term. We don't recall anything. We reconstruct. All memories are in some part false because they're generally fast-as-possible good-enough guesses by the brain. Keeping that in mind helps one understand that the creation of memories requires both active agglomeration of relevant components and active inhibition of the irrelevant. Once you grasp that, then you can try to figure out how the hell that lump of meat knows what's relevant and what's irrelevant when it's trying to put together what we perceive as memories before we get to perceive them, and you can then be as woefully ignorant about what's really going on as the people in the article as well as myself.

Not for me!

[frrrrrspl]

I cannot remember that I have ever forgotten anything.

Re:i don't even understand

[SocratesJedi]

Wikipedia reports that that theory is currently discredited: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_RNA/.

Francis Crick: REM sleep like simulated annealing

[MarkWatson]

In the late 1980s, I participated for about a year on the DARPA neural network tools panel. If I remember correctly (ha :-) it was Francis Crick who suggested that REM sleep was like simulated annealing; that is, serving the function of adding some randomness to a neural network so that we could forget meaningless things that happened to us during the day.

Re:State recall

[dabraun]

I am(not officially) a subject for memory studies having to do with alcholol. The wierd thing is that when I am completely sober I cannot remember many things from when I was previously drunk off my ass, but, if that drunk off my ass state is re-introduced, I can remember everthing.

It's called state dependent learning and it's a widely known concept.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-dependent_learn ing

I believe you can, in fact, learn to be a better drunk driver.

Finally, a good excuse...

[Bellum Aeternus]

Finally, a good excuse for forgetting my girlfriend's birthday: I'm remembering something "more important". Wait... that won't work.

Yes, I post on slashdot. Yes, I have a real, live, breathing girlfriend. :-P