Active Forgetting: Adaptation of Memory by Prefrontal Control

Anderson, Michael C.; Hulbert, Justin C.

doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-072720-094140

Cited by 181 publications

(192 citation statements)

References 169 publications

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“…It has been revealed that arousal plays a role in voluntary forgetting of emotional materials (Zwissler et al., 2012), for example, highly arousal negative materials are exempt from voluntary forgetting (Hauswald et al., 2010). Therefore, we suggest including highly arousing social events (such as interpersonal conflict, divorce, and loss of relatives) in future work to extend the current findings and provide insights for the treatments of mental disorders characterized by deficient control of unwanted memory (Anderson & Hulbert, 2020; Nørby, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Forgetting positive social feedback is difficult: ERP evidence in a directed forgetting paradigm

Xie

et al. 2021

Psychophysiology

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Voluntary forgetting of unwanted memories is an adaptive cognitive function. However, it remains unknown how voluntary forgetting of unwanted social feedback may influence subsequent memories and evaluations, and what the underlying neurocognitive processes are. Here, we presented participants with peer photos together with feedback indicating social acceptance or rejection, followed by “remember” or “forget” instructive cues, while electroencephalograms were recorded during the experiment. We examined the Directed Forgetting (DF) effect in a recognition memory test, and tested participants' explicit and implicit attitudes toward the peers using a social evaluation task and an affect misattribution procedure (AMP). Both the memory test and the AMP were examined immediately and 3 days after the DF task so to estimate both the instant and the long‐term effects of memory control. Behaviorally, immediate memory test showed smaller DF effect for positive than negative social feedback, which suggests that forgetting positive social feedback was more difficult than forgetting negative social feedback. Regarding the ERP results, although participants showed comparable frontal N2 amplitudes (reflecting inhibitory control efforts) following the instruction of forgetting positive and negative social feedback, positive feedback elicited larger late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes than negative feedback during initial encoding phase, suggesting an encoding bias for positive self‐relevant information. Intriguingly, voluntary efforts to forget negative social feedback enhanced people's explicit and implicit evaluations toward the feedback senders. These findings provide new evidence for the adaptive function of memory control, which broadens the influence of voluntary forgetting in the context of social interaction and social evaluation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Forgetting positive social feedback is difficult: ERP evidence in a directed forgetting paradigm

Xie

et al. 2021

Psychophysiology

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“…Moreover, a similar effect on brain activity was observed when some memories were effectively forgotten due to voluntary efforts to suppress them in the Think/NoThink paradigm 11 . Such suppression-induced forgetting of unwanted memories is positively associated with the downregulation of the hippocampal activity caused by the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), as demonstrated by several effective connectivity studies 17,18 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 60%

“…A potentially similar phenomenon based on suppressing alternative memories is retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF), when selective retrieval causes forgetting of a memory competing for awareness 10 . Notably, this effect was observed for various stimuli ranging from visual objects and actions to autobiographical memories and word fragment completion 11 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Such activity in prefrontal regions was positively correlated with the local hippocampal activity supporting the idea of controlling appearance of memories in awareness 13 . Experimental data demonstrating the relationship between the hippocampus deactivation and purging memories from awareness were presented in the studies using the Think/NoThink paradigms 11,13 . Such paradigms assume voluntary control over the awareness content, so this leaves an open question whether the downregulation of the hippocampal activity supports awareness while processing ambiguous stimuli in an automatic mode, being unaware of different options.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Suppression of Non-Selected Meanings Via Hippocampal Inhibition as a Possible Brain Mechanism For Ambiguity Resolution: An fMRI Study Using The Word Fragment Completion Task

Kireev

Korotkov

Masharipov

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Dealing with ambiguity, one usually selects one meaning unconsciously and remains unaware of the alternative meanings. The brain systems dealing with multiple meanings of ambiguous stimuli are relatively well studied, while the brain processing of their non-selected meanings is relatively less investigated. The current functional MRI event-related study used a modified version of the word fragment completion task to reveal possible brain mechanisms involved in processing the non-selected meaning of ambiguous stimuli. Some noun stimuli were ambiguous, and the others were not. Adjectives created contexts strongly biasing the choice of the noun meaning in one or the other way. All ambiguous and unambiguous noun stimuli were presented twice during the experiment. It was revealed that ambiguity resolution was associated with a decrement in the BOLD signal within the right and left hippocampi. This finding supported one of the tested hypotheses assumed that non-selected meanings are actively suppressed. The similarity between this result and BOLD signal changes observed for suppression-induced forgetting for purging unwanted memories from awareness allows suggesting the general neurophysiological basis for voluntary and automatic inhibitory awareness control.

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“…When people and rats retrieve a past event, other memories that compete with and hinder retrieval are more likely to be forgotten (Anderson et al, 1994). This 'retrieval-induced forgetting' occurs for a broad range of stimuli and contexts (Anderson and Hulbert, 2021;Anderson and Marsh, 2021). In humans, RIF arises because trying to retrieve a specific memory triggers inhibitory control mechanism mediated by the lateral prefrontal cortex that focus retrieval on goal-relevant traces by suppressing distracting memories (Anderson and Spellman, 1995;Anderson, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dopamine modulates adaptive forgetting in medial prefrontal cortex

Gallo

Zanoni

Morici

et al. 2021

Preprint

Self Cite

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Active forgetting occurs in many species, but how the mechanisms that control behavior contribute to determining which memories are forgotten is still unknown. We previously found that when rats need to retrieve particular memories to guide exploration, it reduces later retention of other memories encoded in that environment. As with humans, this retrieval-induced forgetting relies on prefrontal control processes. The dopaminergic input to the prefrontal cortex is important for executive functions and cognitive flexibility. We found that, in a similar way, prefrontal dopamine signaling through D1 receptors is required for retrieval-induced forgetting in rats. Blockade of medial prefrontal cortex D1 receptors as animals encountered a familiar object impaired forgetting of the memory of a competing object in a subsequent long-term memory test. Inactivation of the ventral tegmental area produced the same pattern of behavior, a pattern that could be reversed by concomitant activation of prefrontal D1 receptors. We observed a bidirectional modulation of retrieval-induced forgetting by agonists and antagonists of D1 receptors in the medial prefrontal cortex. These findings establish the essential role of prefrontal dopamine in the active forgetting of competing memories, contributing to the shaping of retention in response to an organism behavioral goals.

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Active Forgetting: Adaptation of Memory by Prefrontal Control

Cited by 181 publications

References 169 publications

Forgetting positive social feedback is difficult: ERP evidence in a directed forgetting paradigm

Forgetting positive social feedback is difficult: ERP evidence in a directed forgetting paradigm

Suppression of Non-Selected Meanings Via Hippocampal Inhibition as a Possible Brain Mechanism For Ambiguity Resolution: An fMRI Study Using The Word Fragment Completion Task

Dopamine modulates adaptive forgetting in medial prefrontal cortex

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