Question

explain what causes the human brain to forget and how can the ability to forget serve to be adaptive?

Answer 1

Improper Encoding

One of the common causes of forgetting is that the memory was not even encoded properly. This means that after the information was processed in the short term memory it did not pass on through the long term memory, hence the memory wasn't formed.

Decay

With time a lot of memory was fade away. Decay doesn't necessarily depend on how much time has past or if the memory has gotten old, because even some old memories can be recalled very well and some new memories can be forgetting easily. Sometimes the significance and importance of the information determines if remember something or not.

Interference

Interference theory suggests that we forget things when information interferes with other learned information.

Motivated forgetting

Sigmund Freud called this phenomenon repression. This happens when unacceptable and unpleasant thoughts and memories are pushed into the unconscious.

Forgetting plays an adaptive function, as it helps us to forget unpleasant and negative memories. Studies have shown that the brain discards many irrelevant and less important memories, so that it is easier to remember important information. Research on people with eidetic memory has shown how they have an overload of memories, which is difficult to deal with. In a recent study, researchers have identified a molecule which is responsible for forgetting -the musashi protein, which is responsible for time dependent memory loss. This study was done on worms, but humans also have musashi protein, which make it arguable that human may also have the same system.