We’ve all been guilty of forgetting something; those beans on the stove-top, our glasses and – god forbid – a partner’s birthday.
Whilst we don’t suggest using the line “Sorry babe, I’m just too intelligent to remember” to get you out of the above scenarios, it might actually just be the case. Having researched the science behind memory and transience (forgetting), a new paper in the journal Neuron concluded that forgetting is actually a key part of learning. The team of neuroscientists concluded that the purpose of ‘memory’ is not to remember facts, but to help make intelligent decisions by retaining only valuable information.
To peruse the chronicles of history is to see that the stereotype of the wacky and ‘absent-minded’ professor has existed for centuries. In fact, in Ancient Greece it was said that the philosopher Thales of Miletus was so focused on surveying the night sky that he fell down a well. This combination of intelligence and forgetfulness has long puzzled neuroscientists as bad memory has long been associated with stupidty; a failure of the brain’s mechanism for storing and retrieving information.
Instead, the study found that the brain isn’t malfunctioning when it forgets something but rather actively trying to ditch the memory so it can focus on something important or create a picture that is easier to understand.
Professor Blake Richards of Toronto University and key author of the study, said: “It’s important that the brain forgets irrelevant details and instead focuses on the stuff that’s going to help make decisions in the real world.”
As Professor Richards denotes, “if you’re trying to navigate the world and your brain is constantly bringing up multiple conflicting memories, that makes it harder for you to make an informed decision.”
And of course, the kind of information that is retained depends on the situation or, in Richards’ terms, ‘the environment’.
“One of the things that distinguishes an environment where you’re going to want to remember stuff versus an environment where you want to forget stuff is this question of how consistent the environment is and how likely things are to come back into your life,” Professor Richards said.
For example, you might never remember the name of your partner’s boss, despite having met them at the Office Christmas party. Yet you might know not only the name of your local barrista but his wife’s name, the age of his kids, and what football team he supports. The difference lies in the consistency of the environment – the barrista you will encounter daily but you may only see your partner’s boss a few times a year at best.
Previously, the majority of research on memory had focused solely on remembering (persistence) rather than the consideration of forgetting (transience). Consequently, the published paper in Neuron has certainly shed light on a subject that is often ignored.
“We propose that it is the interaction between persistence and transience that allows for intelligent decision-making in dynamic, noisy environments. Specifically, we argue that transience enhances flexibility, by reducing the influence of outdated information on memory-guided decision-making, and prevents over-fitting to specific past events, thereby promoting generalisation,” said Professor Richards.
Whatever the case, it seems that next time we forget Valentine’s Day we might just have a valid excuse on our hands – and science.
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This article originally appeared on gq.com.au