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Some things are hard to remember. Others are hard to forget—especially things that are traumatic. But kids, it turns out, are better than adults at forgetting the bad stuff. Now scientists think they know why. According to an animal study in the September 4th issue of the journal Science, the brains of adults erect physical barriers that keep painful memories intact.
As adults, events that emotionally disturb us tend to get seared into our brains. And those memories can resurface, causing anxiety, fear and even post-traumatic stress disorder. But young brains are much more resilient—and can even erase unpleasant memories.
To get a better handle on this youthful forgetting, scientists studied the brains of young and old rats. They found that in adult brains, a physical net forms around certain cells in the amygdala, a structure associated with emotional memories. Adults that had been trained to associate a mild foot shock with a specific sound would flinch when they just heard the sound. But using a drug to dissolve this barrier restored the older rats’ ability to extinguish fearful memories. So rats that got the net-busting treatment stayed calm when they heard the sound.
One of the few instances where a net loss is a real gain.
—Karen Hopkin
For more on this memory mediation, see Can fearful memories be erased?
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10 Comments
Add CommentFor people with truly traumatic memories, the ability to forget them, or even just dim the memory somewhate would be a real boon... I hope this field progresses to human treatment at some point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAssisting the older brains to forget would help PTSD. Those of us who have flashbacks when triggered would live a life without the chains that bind us to the past. This article brings hope for the future. If you need people for a study, you may email me, anytime. Thank you for addressing the needs of all people.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour article on assisting the old brain to forget is refreshing to those of us with PTDS. Those of us who have flashbacks when triggered would be loosened from chains that bind us to the traumatic past. We live unwilling and unable to let go of our pasts. It is a hope that one day we will be able to live without reminders of the traumtic pasts. Thank you for addressing the needs of all of us. If you need someone for a study on this, please consider me as a candidate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAva1231
Love may never hurt again...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientists?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think you should give a little respect to the people responsible for this research: Nadine Gogolla, Pico Caroni, Andreas L�thi,Cyril Herry and their institute
I guess this youthful forgetting serves to protect children from being affected by negative emotions which would be detrimental to thier early development. But, it seems that, for adults, the retrieval-induced forgetting would help reduce the possibility of recalling trivial experiences or memories, tho such RIF is not specific to the emtions. It might do us good in some ways such as not to remember things that would bother you, but there are also some dark sides of this forgetting- unable to remember the correct things heard or experienced.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWonderful article...... Terrible pun...!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"What is truth said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer." The ancient Egyptians, for example, would have an offender's name stricken from the records and he'd disappear from the ken of all men in a generation. That's what made Pilate chuckle when Jesus claimed to be the Truth. World leaders to this day manipulate the truth at will.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'll have none of this forgetting stuff. What I remember is the truth, pleasant or unpleasant. When I forget it's a lie, a journey into Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." I hate to think that the CIA, for example, could seize a man who witnessed some horrific truth and inject him with a drug that would enable him to fuzz out the unpleasant details of what he had scene, thereby discrediting him as a witness forever.
Pass all the regulations in the world, once that genie gets out of the bottle, there will always be those with enough power and influence to bring him out at will.
that is why we don't want to be old...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOld people seem garrolous to the young because they ofen see relationships that escape the young mind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTruth may be unpleasant, but it's functional. Freudian analysis focussed on helping people recall suppressed memories, now we seem to have gone full circle and want to help them suppress recalled memories.
Call me crazy, but I'd much rather recall unpleasant truths and learn how to deal with them, than suppress them and have them drive me crazy. Then you could really call me crazy!