But psychology has a few more tricks up its sleeve to explain why this happens. Forgetting ... don't review or use it.

Two cognitive psychology researchers are debunking common misconceptions about human memory while sharing easy ways to recall different types of information.

Forgetting disconnects the intrusion of memory, placing us more in the perceptual moment and pushing away memories that might distract us from the pleasure of appreciating the present.

The ability to recollect experiences and information is a fundamental function of the brain. The task of assembling the memories we keep means throwing away others.

The pain of forgetting starts as an awareness of your losses (but don't worry too much about a few small episodes of forgetting). But again, Alzheimer’s is insatiable.

Memory is protective, holding on to red flags so they can be waved at you later, to guide your future behavior. But forgetting is protective too.

It can be disruptive to not forget. Post traumatic stress disorder is an example of a situation in which people can not forget. The memory is persistent, doesn't fade and often interrupts daily life.

Distraction or reduced attention can cause a memory failure at the encoding stage, while a problem in storage – following brain injury, for example – can cause us to lose the encoded information.

An important part of the human brain has to work harder to actively forget a memory than it does to remember it, according to the results of a newly-published study. The research is a step towards ...

Interview Highlights We hear a lot about the study of memory. Is the study of forgetting a relatively new thing? Within psychology, there's a long history of work examining forgetting. So that's ...