1. What do memories consist of?
Recollection is not a one-dimensional thought or idea. This is the sum of impressions from the specific events of your past. You remember not a point in time, but a lot of sensual details.
For example, if you try to remember a pleasant day spent on the beach as a child, not only the image of the river will appear in your memory. You will remember how warm the sand was, the smell of the wind and the taste of the ice cream bought at the kiosk across the road.
Any of these sensations can become a trigger. When you buy a plombir, similar in taste to the same one, from childhood, you are transferred again on a hot day on a river beach.
Thus, memories are inseparable from the context.
2. How to manage memories?
Context is the most important factor for someone who wants to learn how to manage their memories. After all, with his help you can fix the memory. The wider and brighter the context, the stronger we remember the event.
Let’s return to the memory of a hot day on the beach. It is desirable that you remember the details, atmosphere, emotions and feelings. Then the context will be formed.
If you remember the light stream of the river water, the warm sand of the coast, the hot asphalt of the path next to your umbrella and the creamy taste of the filling, the memory of this day will remain very bright and full for many years. The wider the context, the more diverse the experience. It is it that we resurrect in memory when we recall the hot day spent in childhood.
So, if we know how to use the context to create memories, can we find a way to erase memory for ourselves?
3. How can I erase memories?
The strategy of forgetting can be this: allow yourself to forget the individual details of an event in order to destroy the memory completely.
To test this assumption, the scientists conducted a study in which two groups of people participated. They had to learn the words from two separate lists and simultaneously look at photographs of different landscapes to create a context for memories.
One group was told to approach the task very carefully: learn the first list of words by heart and only after that go to the second. Subjects from the second group were asked to first learn the words, and then forget them. Then the volunteers had to repeat what they remembered.
The brain activity of the participants in the experiment was studied using functional MRI. It turned out that subjects who forgot the learned words had a much lower level of activity in that part of the brain that is responsible for image processing. This group of participants simply allowed words and images to slip out of memory.
When the brain tries to remember words, facts, images, it constantly works to create a context. When the brain tries to forget something, it initially rejects the context and abstracts from it. Therefore, the memory is created with difficulty and does not exist for long.
If you go back to the example of the beach, you can say this: to forget this day, you should specifically try to forget the taste of the filling and the hot sand under your feet.
4. Is it possible to remove the memory completely?
Does this method always work for 100%? Of course not. To say that scientists have discovered a magical way to forget, as in the film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, it is impossible. We know about the brain and memory too little and do not know how to erase memories.
Forgetting is very useful. We can use it to make it easier to survive a traumatic experience or a painful event. Forgetting is necessary to clear the brain of unnecessary information.
In the experiment, participants memorized and forgot simple things: words and pictures. Real memory is dozens of details and sensual impressions, so it’s not so easy to erase it. But this research is the first step in the beginning of a very intriguing and alluring path.
It seems that we can understand how to forget unpleasant and unnecessary things. More importantly, we will learn to remember happy days and moments for life.
