Forgetfulness can be frustrating, but cognitive scientists reckon it underpins the brain’s capacity to efficiently process sensory information – and its unique ability to generalise our knowledge
THERE are few things more frustrating than trying to recall a fact or memory and finding it has gone missing. You might ask yourself whether it is the start of mental decline or the onset of a degenerative brain condition. What you probably don’t think is that forgetting is a good thing. But it can be. New research into memory suggests that it is actually a healthy and necessary brain function – and one that is becoming increasingly important in our rapidly changing lives.
Everyday forgetting – like not being able to recall what you ate for dinner last week – is called natural forgetting. This is in contrast to pathological forgetting, which results from brain injuries or conditions such as Alzheimer’s. Far from being a problem, natural forgetting underpins one of our most unique and powerful traits – our ability to generalise.
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