If you forget where you put your glasses you had in hand a moment ago, if you can not remember where you parked the car or there's no way that you can think of the word I have on the tip of my tongue ... do not worry : it's normal.

Moreover, because the memory is good, forgetting is as important as remembering. The two Canadian researchers say that the spotlight on the other side of the coin of memory, forgetting. According to them it is not a failure of the mechanism, but rather a vital cog for its proper functioning.

The handicap of too much memory. The concept is not entirely new, but appreciated especially in areas far away from research on the neurobiology of memory. Funes the Memorioso, character eponymous short story by Borges, he is able to remember everything, but for this it is overwhelmed by the countless number of details: can not think of an abstract idea.

S. The patient described by the Russian neurologist Alexander Luria in Journey into the mind of a man who never forgot anything is similarly unable to forget, and lives this form of pervasive memory and absolute as a liability or as a potentiality.

Most people, including many scientists, on the other hand sees the ideal memory as a system that enables seamless coexistence of all the memories.

In work published in Neuron, the two researchers at the University of Toronto, Canada, browse the latest research about the possible neurobiological mechanisms by which memories would be filtered out, and propose the vision of memory as a calibrated mechanism fixation and loss of memory.

Synapses to work. If, as many studies have shown, the establishment of new synaptic connections is the phenomenon that enables the consolidation of memories, then, conversely, the weakening of these connections should be the mechanism linked to their loss, claim Blake Richards and Paul Frankland.

In fact, some recent studies have concluded that such a mechanism could really work. Another of the ways in which memories may weaken and then it would get lost with the creation of new connections the "overwrite" the previous ones. According to the working group to study one of the authors, Frankland, when generating new neurons in the hippocampus (the area of the brain crucial for memory formation), new connections reshape the circuits, and erase memories already stored.

Other data also suggest that it is a plausible mechanism. For example, in an experiment in which mice had to navigate through a maze that was gradually changed, when the animals were given medicines to forget the old location, they were able to find the faster output.

Intelligent Decisions. According to the authors, the right balance between remembering and forgetting allows us to make smarter decisions. Firstly, because forgetting allows us to adapt to new situations, letting the outdated information being lost and potentially misleading. Secondly, because in this way makes it easier to generalize from past events to new, retaining the basic information but eliminating the specific details.

In short, the memory it would not convey the most accurate information, but rather the most useful, so that we can take decisions, adapting to the environment and circumstances.

From Focus