The human capacity to forget is not merely a failure of memory but a fundamental adaptive mechanism. Memory suppression and intentional forgetting involve the active inhibition of unwanted or ...

If you didn't forget things, you'd be in for a world of trouble. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Forgetting is part of our daily ...

Getting older goes hand in hand with forgetfulness — like not remembering the name of the new restaurant in town or misplacing your glasses. And while it can be frustrating, it isn’t instantly ...

Memory researcher Dr. Scott Small would like to reassure you that you’re not losing your wits. Visit him in his lab at Columbia University’s Medical Center, tell him how the last time you went to a ...

Rather than holding information in specific areas of the brain, our memories are represented by the connections between neurons, called synapses. According to a recent study from the Salk Institute in ...

Social learning is typically thought to be most beneficial when the environments in which individuals live change quite slowly – they can safely learn tried and tested information from one another and ...

Neuroscience has some comforting news if you have ever forgotten someone's name shortly after meeting them: it is not a sign of memory loss, ageing, or negligence. The human brain is simply ...

The night after my high school graduation, most of my classmates hit the bars to get drunk. Rather than join them, I picked a tamer celebration, assuming that I would be less likely to get into ...

Have you ever walked into a room and then wondered why you went there? If you’ve experienced this phenomenon, you’ve had a prospective memory lapse. Memory usually means remembering things that have ...

One of the most actively debated questions about human and non-human culture is this: under what circumstances might we expect culture, in particular the ability to learn from one another, to be ...