Sara S
01-12-2012, 04:57 PM
this excerpt makes me feel much better about being what I call "slightly brain-dead"...Sara
from delancyplace.com:
In today's excerpt - total recall, the ability of someone to remember every word
they read or hear, has often been lauded as tantamount to a high level of intelligence.
The opposite is more often the case. Those with total recall often have difficulty
making decisions, and more readily miss understanding the overall point of a book
or lecture - because they get enmeshed in an undistinguishable mass of irrelevant
details. Forgetting, it turns out, has enormous value for concise understanding
and for emotional health:
"Solomon Shereshevsky could recite entire speeches, word for word, after hearing
them once. In minutes, he memorized complex math formulas, passages in foreign
languages and tables consisting of 50 numbers or nonsense syllables. The traces
of these sequences were so durably etched in his brain that he could reproduce them
years later, according to Russian psychologist Alexander R. Luria, who wrote about
the man he called, simply, 'S' in The Mind of a Mnemonist.
"But the weight of all the memories, piled up and overlapping in his brain, created
crippling confusion. S could not fathom the meaning of a story, because the words
got in the way. 'No,' [S] would say. 'This is too much. Each word calls up images;
they collide with one another, and the result is chaos. I can't make anything out
of this.' When S was asked to make decisions, as chair of a union group, he could
not parse the situation as a whole, tripped up as he was on irrelevant details.
He made a living performing feats of recollection.
"Yet he desperately wanted to forget. In one futile attempt, he wrote down items
he wanted purged from his mind and burned the paper. Although S's efforts to rein
in his memory were unusually vigilant, we all need - and often struggle - to forget.
"Human memory is pretty good," says cognitive neuro-scientist Benjamin J. Levy of
Stanford Univer- sity. "The problem with our memories is not that nothing comes
to mind-but that irrelevant stuff comes to mind."
"The act of forgetting crafts and hones data in the brain as if carving a statue
from a block of marble. It enables us to make sense of the world by clearing a
path to the thoughts that are truly valuable. It also aids emotional recovery. 'You
want to forget embarrassing things,' says cognitive neuroscientist Zara Bergstrom
of the University of Cambridge. 'Or if you argue with your partner, you want to
move on.' In recent years researchers have amassed evidence for our ability to willfully
forget. They have sketched out a neural circuit underlying this skill analogous
to the one that inhibits impulsive actions.
"The emerging data provide the first scientific support for Sigmund Freud's controversial
theory of repression, by which unwanted memories are shoved into the subconscious.
The new evidence suggests that the ability to repress is quite useful. Those who
cannot do this well tend to let thoughts stick in their mind. They ruminate, which
can pave a path to depression. Weak restraints on memory may similarly impede the
emotional recovery of trauma victims. Lacking brakes on mental intrusions, individuals
with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are also more likely to be
among the forgetless (to coin a term). In short, memory - and forgetting - can shape
your personality."
Author: Ingrid Wickelgren
Title: "Trying to Forget"
Publisher: Scientific American Mind
Date: January/February 2012
Pages: 33-38
from delancyplace.com:
In today's excerpt - total recall, the ability of someone to remember every word
they read or hear, has often been lauded as tantamount to a high level of intelligence.
The opposite is more often the case. Those with total recall often have difficulty
making decisions, and more readily miss understanding the overall point of a book
or lecture - because they get enmeshed in an undistinguishable mass of irrelevant
details. Forgetting, it turns out, has enormous value for concise understanding
and for emotional health:
"Solomon Shereshevsky could recite entire speeches, word for word, after hearing
them once. In minutes, he memorized complex math formulas, passages in foreign
languages and tables consisting of 50 numbers or nonsense syllables. The traces
of these sequences were so durably etched in his brain that he could reproduce them
years later, according to Russian psychologist Alexander R. Luria, who wrote about
the man he called, simply, 'S' in The Mind of a Mnemonist.
"But the weight of all the memories, piled up and overlapping in his brain, created
crippling confusion. S could not fathom the meaning of a story, because the words
got in the way. 'No,' [S] would say. 'This is too much. Each word calls up images;
they collide with one another, and the result is chaos. I can't make anything out
of this.' When S was asked to make decisions, as chair of a union group, he could
not parse the situation as a whole, tripped up as he was on irrelevant details.
He made a living performing feats of recollection.
"Yet he desperately wanted to forget. In one futile attempt, he wrote down items
he wanted purged from his mind and burned the paper. Although S's efforts to rein
in his memory were unusually vigilant, we all need - and often struggle - to forget.
"Human memory is pretty good," says cognitive neuro-scientist Benjamin J. Levy of
Stanford Univer- sity. "The problem with our memories is not that nothing comes
to mind-but that irrelevant stuff comes to mind."
"The act of forgetting crafts and hones data in the brain as if carving a statue
from a block of marble. It enables us to make sense of the world by clearing a
path to the thoughts that are truly valuable. It also aids emotional recovery. 'You
want to forget embarrassing things,' says cognitive neuroscientist Zara Bergstrom
of the University of Cambridge. 'Or if you argue with your partner, you want to
move on.' In recent years researchers have amassed evidence for our ability to willfully
forget. They have sketched out a neural circuit underlying this skill analogous
to the one that inhibits impulsive actions.
"The emerging data provide the first scientific support for Sigmund Freud's controversial
theory of repression, by which unwanted memories are shoved into the subconscious.
The new evidence suggests that the ability to repress is quite useful. Those who
cannot do this well tend to let thoughts stick in their mind. They ruminate, which
can pave a path to depression. Weak restraints on memory may similarly impede the
emotional recovery of trauma victims. Lacking brakes on mental intrusions, individuals
with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are also more likely to be
among the forgetless (to coin a term). In short, memory - and forgetting - can shape
your personality."
Author: Ingrid Wickelgren
Title: "Trying to Forget"
Publisher: Scientific American Mind
Date: January/February 2012
Pages: 33-38