In what has to be our favorite recent study, researchers from Canada have found that being forgetful may be a sign your brain is working properly. Their research shows that only remembering certain details could be a sign your brain is dividing up the really important information from the stuff that doesn’t matter as much.
The study finds that the growth of new neurons in the hippocampus - the part of the brain that’s linked to memory - seems to “promote forgetting.” But it’s only to make more room for the important stuff and to let go of the rest.
“We always idealize the person who can smash a trivia game, but the point of memory is not being able to remember who won the Stanley Cup in 1972,” explains lead study author Professor Blake Richards of the University of Toronto. “The point of memory is to make you an intelligent person who can make decisions given the circumstances, and an important aspect in helping you do that is being able to forget some information.”
So remember this the next time you can’t remember your Netflix password or your sister’s birthday. It could just be your brain “waiting for more useful information.” And that’s what we’re going to believe, because science says so.
Source: Scary Mommy
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