Forgetting can be hard work for your brain
Neural activity higher when told to erase image from mind rather than remember it
NEW YORK — Sometimes forgetting can be harder than remembering. When people forced themselves to forget a recently seen image, select brain activity was higher than when they tried to remember that image.
Forgetting is often a passive process, one in which the memory slips out of the brain, Tracy Wang of the University of Texas at Austin said April 2 at the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. But in some cases, forgetting can be deliberate.