Selective memory

Helpful when starting out in a new lab without any knowledge of the topic. Embarrassing moments occur daily, and I'm pretty keen to forget them! 

'Through EEG measurements, he has also managed to capture the exact moment when the memory is inhibited, that is when the forgetfulness is imposed.'

Without having read the original research article, I take from this that some region of the brain that is normally active when recalling this memory, is inactive when the subject is actively trying to repress it.

Interesting. Sometimes I try and repress embarrassing moments of the day, but as they allude to in this article, all that seems to occur is that they 'pop out' in some other way. Usually I experience a  physiological response, such as anxiety or similar, and rather than thinking less about the memory, it seems to come to the forefront of my attention. (Surely you know what I'm talking about?!) I would admire the study participants for achieving active forgetfulness, but I've participated in psychology experiments before, and I assume experimental memories are probably way easier to forget than embarrassing emotionally-driven memories! That's a whole other level.

To me, these findings seems like some kind of 'reverse plasticity'. The 'use it or lose it' philosophy becomes 'use it to lose it', whereby instead of actively strengthening connections, we're talking about actively inhibiting them.

The comments say it all: most people don't have trouble forgetting things; it's remembering them that's the real problem!

But perhaps with a little bit of mental exercise, I'll be able to forget that the other day I broke the vacuum pump in the tissue culture room, infected the first bottle of media I used, and wrote my name on the whiteboard in permanent marker...