A renowned neurologist explains why our routine forgetting-of names, dates, even house keys-is not a brain failure but actually one of our minds' most beneficial functions.
Who wouldn't want a better memory? Dr. Scott Small has dedicated his career to understanding why memory fails us. As director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Columbia, he focuses largely on patients who experience pathological forgetting, and it is in contrast to their suffering that normal forgetting, which we experience all the time, every day, appears in sharp relief.
Until recently, most everyone, memory scientists included, believed that forgetting served no purpose. But new research in psychology, neurobiology, medicine, and computer science tells a different story. As it turns out, forgetting is not a failure of our minds. It's not even a benign glitch. It is, in fact, good for us-a required function for our minds to work best.
Forgetting benefits...