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Click Here To Read: In Learning, the Brain Forgets Things on Purpose
Introduction (Via Science Daily)
Scientists have known that newly acquired, short-term memories are often fleeting. But a new study in flies suggests that kind of forgetfulness doesn’t just happen. Rather, an active process of erasing memories may in some ways be as important as the ability to lay down new memories, say researchers who report their findings in the February 19th issue of the journal Cell.
Excerpt (Via Science Daily)
In all cases, the flies forgot what they learned after some period of time in a process driven by Rac. Rac switches on when flies simply forget with the passage of time, they report. It just switches on faster when the insects either get distracted by new information or “confused” by conflicting experiences. When Rac was blocked, new memories decayed more slowly, extending their life from a few hours to more than a day. When Rac levels were artificially increased in fly neurons, the insects’ new memories were erased more rapidly.
The findings open up a whole new avenue of study in neuroscience of the process of forgetting, Zhong said. Ironically, this line of exploration may turn out to reveal much about how memories are made.
“We still don’t really understand the substrate of memory in terms of what is formed and what is erased,” Zhong said. “The study of forgetting may be a better way to identify the material basis of memory.”
Click Here To Read: In Learning, the Brain Forgets Things on Purpose
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