Working in Movement

Good memory ability is desirable, for the most part. Most of us don't want to come across as dotty. But there are some memories we don't want--traumatic events, embarrassing situations, etc. Can we forget these intrusive memories on purpose? A study at the university of Oregon suggests that we might be able to. And parts of the motor system might be involved.

Brain May Be Able to Bury Unwanted Memories, Study Shows in the New York Times Science Section briefly describes the study. Researchers ask people to memorize pairs of words. Later, the researchers gave them one of the words. Some subjects were ask to remember the other associated word, and others were asked to repress it.

Brain scans accompanied all this, of course, so the researchers could see which brain regions activated and which didn't. Predictably, the hippocampus, the brain area linked to memory, showed lots of activity when remembering the associated word, and much less when trying to forget it. But another area in a different part of the brain, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, lit up when trying to forget the memorized word. This prefrontal area is associated with motor inhibition.

What's interesting about this the motor system is involved in inhibiting the hippocampus, or at least reducing its activity. Maybe there is some sort of direct relationship, but another scientist suggested it might be simpler than that. This scientist suggests that "it's possible the subjects are simply directing their attention elsewhere and using a lot of energy and brain resources to think of something different." This may having a passing connection with the work of Timothy Gallwey that I've written about previously, although that work does not concern memory per se.

Reading this triggered a memory of my own. Feldenkrais talked about a technique for easily memorizing or remembering things. Simply, you actively try to forget the thing you want to remember. In actively trying to forget, the item is in memory and won't be forgotten. But this seems to be at a different stage than the study. Trying to forget something as you are learning it, as opposed to trying to suppress it once you know it. Might be interesting to do a study on this.