The brain is not made of rubber: to remember something, you have to forget anything else

looks like an old Buddhist proverb that in a pot full of new knowledge does not mind volёsh confirmed by researchers who study the human brain. Scientists from the University of Birmingham and the Institute of Behavioral and Clinical Neuroscience at своей new work proves , what to include in the new memories memory mind must weaken and even remove old.

The researchers looked at the brain with the help of the device functional magnetic resonance imaging. The subjects were first shown 144 pairs of words and images. They then tried to remember the pair 72, i.e. half the pairs of the first set, by constructing associations between words and images. Thereafter, they started to memorize the second half of the set. And in the last phase of the experiment they were trying to remember the association of the first set.

FMRI scanning apparatus provide information in the form of a three-dimensional image composed of voxels (three-dimensional pixels), each of which shows the level of blood flow in this region of the brain. Brains were scanned four times - after memorizing the first set, after storing the second, then when trying to remember the first set and the last time - when trying to distinguish between images that they remember from those that they have not seen before.

As a result, scientists claim that they were able to see an adaptive forgetting mechanism in action. Attempts to recall the association of the second set of the first lead to forgetting. When subjects were asked to recall the second set, the first they could not remember with the same efficiency. When they were shown pictures of the first set, the levels of brain activation when trying to remember the right words were even lower than when viewing the pictures, do not come in sets.

From this it was concluded that the previous active memories suppressed brain. It turns out that forgetting - the same important function of the brain, as well as storage.

Source: geektimes.ru/post/248108/