Brain Is Designed To Forget Unimportant Details On Purpose

Brain is defined as the central organ of the human nervous system. The brain together with the spinal cord makes the central nervous system; its main function is to control the motor function and body balance. It also interprets information sent to it by various body organs i.e. eyes, ears, and other sensory organs.

Recent studies from the University of Basel in Switzerland tend to suggest that our brains are designed to constantly and actively forget unimportant details on purpose while in normal circumstances it should improve human memory recall of experiences for ultimate survival. In a general note, memory formation entails registering, processing, storing and retrieving information for later reference.

The following factors have been confirmed to contribute the above scenario.

Attention

Attention guides a human being’s focus into identifying what is relevant and what is not; as a result, we pay much attention to intriguing occurrences which are mind boggling and surprising. A human brain knows how to identify and categorize these occurrences. Unimportant events or occurrences will not be given much attention therefore easily lost in the brain.

Consolidation of memory

A human brain is divided into long and short term memory compartments. Most of the information that the brain picks is always forgotten and never makes it to long term memory compartment. When a brain encounters complex situations e.g. solving mathematical equations, it will free up its short term memory so as to take in the new information, simultaneously the short term memory will be lost on purpose.

Memory recall

Painful emotional occurrences are categorized into physical and emotional pain. In the human brains, emotional pain tends to remain in the memory for quite a long time than physical pain; as a result, an instance of physical pain may be forgotten quickly than an instance of emotional pain.

Blanking Out

Stressful conditions can lead to memory loss or deficit i.e. mental blanking during strength draining conditions like examination, thinking and worrying too much about an expected outcome will create anxiety which in turns will hamper your decision making capabilities. In this case the brain may forget most of its recent memory additions.

In simple terms, forgetting is the inability to remember already encoded and stored details in the brain. Psychologists and medical practitioners agree that forgetting is not a medical condition and may be as a result of the factors discussed above. It is a known fact that human beings cannot retain all that they have learnt or seen, much is forgotten. In some instances, what we think is forgotten may not be true, but just lack of coordination of sense organs.