We all forget things, and sometimes it would be better if we did not. Normal forgetting occurs more frequently as we age, but more serious, progressive, retrograde forgetting, which can have severe, ...

A baby zebrafish is just half the size of a pea. A recent look inside its transparent brain, however, offers clues to the far bigger mystery of how we remember—and how we forget. In an experiment that ...

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 ...

Relationships thrive on appropriate remembering. Just as forgetting implies a lack of caring, remembering affirms that we care. Recalling past events spent together and remembering consequential ...

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 ...

Traditionally, forgetting names, skills, events or information is often thought of as purely negative — a passive decay. However unintuitive it may seem, research suggests that forgetting plays a ...

There are clear, practical benefits to forgetting, especially with outdated information—where you parked your car yesterday, an old password you no longer use, the PIN code you replaced, the details ...

Forgetting in our day to day lives may feel annoying or, as we get older, a little frightening. But it is an entirely normal part of memory – enabling us to move on or make space for new information.

Dr. Small is the director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Columbia University and the author of the book “Forgetting: The Benefits of Not Remembering.” See more of our coverage in your ...