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![How suppressing retrieval reduces the unconscious influence of unwanted memories, via neocortical inhibition [67]. (A) Adaptation of the think/no-think (TNT) procedure (67). After learning word–object associations, participants either repeatedly retrieved (think) or suppressed (no-think) objects, using direct suppression [88,93]. On the final test, participants viewed objects distorted by noise that were gradually revealed, and participants indicated when they could identify the distorted object. (B) Suppressing retrieval activated the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) (i), and reduced activity in fusiform gyrus (ii) (effective connectivity analyses established that the former modulated the latter). (C) Behavioural and neural aftereffects of suppressing visual memories. All objects showed repetition priming (speeded identification time), relative to novel objects, but this was reduced for suppressed objects (i). Similarly, all studied objects showed neural priming (reduced neural activity) in fusiform gyrus and the lateral occipital complex, relative to novel objects, but this was partially reversed for suppressed objects (ii). Negative coupling between DLPFC and fusiform gyrus predicted the magnitude of the reversal in neural priming on the final perceptual identification test (iii). Abbreviations: DCM, Dynamic Causal Modelling; MGF, middle frontal gyrus; ROI, region of interest.](profile/Michael-Anderson-32/publication/261762673/figure/fig2/AS:269749183578114@1441324625080/How-suppressing-retrieval-reduces-the-unconscious-influence-of-unwanted-memories-via.png)
How suppressing retrieval reduces the unconscious influence of unwanted memories, via neocortical inhibition [67]. (A) Adaptation of the think/no-think (TNT) procedure (67). After learning word–object associations, participants either repeatedly retrieved (think) or suppressed (no-think) objects, using direct suppression [88,93]. On the final test, participants viewed objects distorted by noise that were gradually revealed, and participants indicated when they could identify the distorted object. (B) Suppressing retrieval activated the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) (i), and reduced activity in fusiform gyrus (ii) (effective connectivity analyses established that the former modulated the latter). (C) Behavioural and neural aftereffects of suppressing visual memories. All objects showed repetition priming (speeded identification time), relative to novel objects, but this was reduced for suppressed objects (i). Similarly, all studied objects showed neural priming (reduced neural activity) in fusiform gyrus and the lateral occipital complex, relative to novel objects, but this was partially reversed for suppressed objects (ii). Negative coupling between DLPFC and fusiform gyrus predicted the magnitude of the reversal in neural priming on the final perceptual identification test (iii). Abbreviations: DCM, Dynamic Causal Modelling; MGF, middle frontal gyrus; ROI, region of interest.
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Not all memories are equally welcome in awareness. People limit the time they spend thinking about unpleasant experiences, a process that begins during encoding, but that continues when cues later remind someone of the memory. Here, we review the emerging behavioural and neuroimaging evidence that suppressing awareness of an unwelcome memory, at en...
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Context 1
... in Cognitive Sciences xxx xxxx, Vol. xxx, No. x TICS-1316;No. of Pages 14 of visual objects, downregulation is also observed in fusi- form regions known to be critical for perceptual awareness of objects (Figure 3Bii) [67]. Interestingly, on later percep- tual identification tests, participants find it more difficult to see previously suppressed objects in visual noise, com- pared with either baseline or think objects (Figure 3Ci), showing that motivated forgetting also impairs implicit memory [66,67]. ...Context 2
... No. x TICS-1316;No. of Pages 14 of visual objects, downregulation is also observed in fusi- form regions known to be critical for perceptual awareness of objects (Figure 3Bii) [67]. Interestingly, on later percep- tual identification tests, participants find it more difficult to see previously suppressed objects in visual noise, com- pared with either baseline or think objects (Figure 3Ci), showing that motivated forgetting also impairs implicit memory [66,67]. Echoing this impaired perception, neural aftereffects are observed in the same fusiform cortex regions downregulated during retrieval suppression: no- think objects show reduced neural priming (Figure 3Cii). ...Context 3
... on later percep- tual identification tests, participants find it more difficult to see previously suppressed objects in visual noise, com- pared with either baseline or think objects (Figure 3Ci), showing that motivated forgetting also impairs implicit memory [66,67]. Echoing this impaired perception, neural aftereffects are observed in the same fusiform cortex regions downregulated during retrieval suppression: no- think objects show reduced neural priming (Figure 3Cii). Given that neural priming is considered a signature of perceptual memory [102], this finding suggests that per- ceptual memory traces were disrupted by inhibitory [67]. ...Similar publications
Research indicates that there are two possible mechanisms by which particular target memories can be intentionally forgotten. Direct suppression, which involves the suppression of the unwanted memory directly, and is dependent on a fronto-hippocampal modulatory process, and, memory substitution, which includes directing one’s attention to an altern...
Patients with multimodal semantic deficits following stroke (‘semantic aphasia’) have largely intact knowledge, yet difficulty controlling conceptual retrieval to suit the circumstances. Although conceptual representations are thought to be largely distinct from episodic representations of recent events, controlled retrieval processes may overlap a...
Background and objectives:
Despite accumulating research demonstrating that acute exercise may enhance memory function, very little research has evaluated whether acute exercise can effectuate intentional directed forgetting (DF), an adaptative strategy to facilitate subsequent memory performance.
Materials and methods:
A three-arm parallel-grou...
Across two studies we investigated the influence of contextual cues on autobiographical memory recall. In Study 1, participants (N = 37) with major depressive disorder, in episode or in varying degrees of remission, were administered a Negative Autobiographical Memory Task (NAMT) that required them to retrieve negatively valenced memories in respon...
Citations
... That the well-studied phenomenon of "motivated forgetting" exists and has been studied in the brain (Anderson & Hanslmayr, 2014) should immediately give us pause in considering this a complete account of human behavior. In cases of motivated forgetting, information is actively removed from memory, such that uncertainty (and plausibly often error) is increased. ...
The Free Energy Principle (FEP) is a normative computational framework for the iterative reduction of prediction error and uncertainty through perception-intervention cycles. This principle has been presented as a potential unifying theory for all brain functions (Friston, 2006). Decision-making is an important cognitive faculty whose mechanisms must be explained by a theory hoping to unify the brain sciences. This challenge has been accepted by several proponents of the FEP (Friston, 2010; Gershman, 2019). We evaluate these attempts to reduce decision-making to the FEP, using Lucas' (2005) meta-theory of the brain's contextual constraints as a guidepost. We find variants of the FEP unable to explain behavior in certain types of diagnostic, predictive, and multi-armed bandit decision tasks. We trace the shortcomings to the theory's lack of an adequate notion of utility, a concept central to decision-making and grounded in the brain's biological reality. We argue that any attempts to fully reduce utility to the FEP would require unrealistic assumptions, making the principle an unlikely candidate for unifying brain science. We suggest that researchers instead attempt to identify contexts in which either informational or reward constraints predominate, delimiting the FEP's area of applicability. To encourage this type of research, we propose a two-factor formal framework that can subsume any FEP model and allows experimenters to estimate the contributions of informational versus reward constraints to behavior.
... have shown that you can indulge in deliberate forgetting since people forget negative emotional events more easily than neutral ones (Anderson & Hanslmayr (2014). Motivational forgetting (where a person intentionally or unconsciously suppresses or blocks out certain memories or information due to underlying motivations, emotions, or psychological needs) of an event is said to disrupt the encoding of that event and reduce a person's ability to recall that event in the future. ...
Autobiographical memory for deceitful events is said to be forgotten over time to reduce guilt and stress. People who engage in deceitful behavior continue to do so because they are able to stretch their memories to match their moral outlook. In this study, the authors wanted to see if participants who engage in deceitful behavior will change their behavior if they are reminded of their previous misdeeds and compare it with reminding them of past moral behavior and any neutral event. We also studied how the experience, or phenomenology of remembering, differs between immoral and moral memories. In Experiment 1, we found evidence to suggest that reminding deceptive autobiographical memory does not reduce deceptive behavior. In Experiment 2, we found evidence to suggest phenomenological characteristics of Immoral and moral memories are not significantly different from each other but they are both significantly different from that of neutral memory. This contradicts established results in the field. It is interesting to note that only emotional valence is significantly different between immoral and moral memory.
... They instead are likely to have had a general (and incorrect) "schema" of what they had done. It is well-known that when remembering past events, we tend to generate not only approximations of what occurred, but also forget awkward details (Anderson and Hanslmayr 2014). The awkward details present in the Lindsay et al. project was the fact that their papers did not, for example, advocate morbid obesity or that males should be trained via electrocution. ...
During 2018, three academics employed what they referred to as “reflective ethnography” to examine the hypothesis that many disciplines (e.g., sociology, educational philosophy, and critical race theory) are motivated by extreme ideologies, as opposed to generating knowledge. The authors published, or had accepted, seven “hoax” articles in a number of peer-reviewed journals. When the story broke in the Wall Street Journal, the authors stated that the articles advocated a number of ludicrous, inhumane, and appalling ideas. For example, one argued that men should be trained like dogs with shock collars. Their acceptance for publication was therefore taken as evidence for the kind of ideas that many academic disciplines will advocate. In the present article, I will show that the central aspects of the hoax articles do not match with how they were later described by the hoax authors and many other commentators (e.g., journalists). Despite the vast amount of media coverage, this has (virtually) gone unnoticed. I will suggest that the widely accepted narrative of the so-called Grievance Studies affair is incorrect.
... Rich evidence from the directed forgetting literature indeed suggests that people can voluntarily forget previously studied information (for reviews, see Anderson & Hanslmayr, 2014;Bäuml et al., 2020;MacLeod, 1998). ...
... Thus, in future research, it would be interesting, also from a clinical perspective, to focus on boosting disruption of retrieval, as humans often seek to forget aversive experiences that have long since been encoded and consolidated. Along those lines, studies using memory suppression techniques have already provided some primary evidence demonstrating reduced recall of unwanted memories following subliminal memory reactivation 57 and reduced (self-reported) symptoms of anxiety, negative affect, and depression, following a 3-day, online suppression training 58 . Even though extensive further research is required before advancing to clinical translation, our data across a set of experiments convincingly show that DF manipulations can be successfully used to interfere with emotional memory expression. ...
Memory is susceptible to voluntary disruption, for instance, through directed forgetting manipulations, in which people are cued to intentionally “forget” information. Until now, directed forgetting has been primarily studied for declarative memory performance. Here, we demonstrate that directed forgetting can also disrupt associative memories acquired through fear conditioning. In two experiments, participants showed poorer recognition and recall of images paired with electric shocks when instructed to forget, compared to when instructed to remember them. Further, they also showed weaker skin conductance responses to images paired with shocks that they were instructed to forget, despite repeated, full reinforcement of the aversive outcome. Our findings provide evidence for the effect of directed forgetting not only on declarative but also physiological read-outs of emotional memory, thereby suggesting that forgetting instructions can be applied to interfere with emotional associative memory.
... IMDF is usually described as intentional or voluntary forgetting, and thus provides evidence that humans have some control over what they remember and forget (Anderson & Hanslmayr, 2014;Bjork, 1970;Fawcett et al., 2013;Johnson, 1994;MacLeod, 1998). This conclusion, however, seems to be somewhat premature as nearly all previous research on directed forgetting has utilized what we are calling a forcedchoice methodology, whereby subjects are specifically told which information to remember and which information to forget (but see Baldwin et al., 2021, for a free-choice procedure). ...
The directed forgetting paradigm has long been used to test whether humans can voluntarily choose to forget learned information. However, to date, nearly all directed forgetting paradigms have involved a forced-choice paradigm, in which the participants are instructed about which learned information they should forget. While studies have repeatedly shown that this directed forgetting does lead to a decreased ability to later remember the information, it is still unclear whether these effects would be present if participants were allowed to, of their own accord, choose which information they wanted to forget. In two experiments here, we introduce a free-choice variety of the item method directed forgetting paradigm and show that directed forgetting effects are robust, both for instructed and voluntary forgetting. We discuss the implications of our findings for notions of voluntary forgetting and for the self-choice effect in memory.
... Stopping an unwanted memory from unfolding when triggered by an external cue is defined as retrieval suppression and leads to suppression induced forgetting which describes the lowered accessibility of a frequently successfully suppressed memory (Anderson & Hanslmayr, 2014). The capacity of retrieval suppression and subsequent adaptive forgetting processes have been widely connected to inhibitory control (Catarino et al., 2015;Gagnepain et al., 2014;K upper et al., 2014). ...
... These would hinder unwanted thoughts to fully intrude awareness and in turn leading to a lowered long-term accessibility of trauma related memories. A diminished inhibitory control could potentially have the opposite effect, paradoxically strengthening the unwanted memories by focusing cognitive resources through inefficient suppression attempts and preventing the occurrence of otherwise favorable adaptive forgetting processes (Anderson & Hanslmayr, 2014;Hulbert et al., 2016). ...
PTSD symptomatology is known to be associated with executive dysfunction. Inhibitory control is a core component of executive functioning, and inhibitory skills are essential both for adequate functioning in everyday life and important in situations following trauma. The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between trauma exposure, inhibitory control and PTSD symptomatology in adolescent survivors of the terror attack at Utøya, Norway on the 22nd of July, 2011. In this cross-sectional case-control study, 20 trauma exposed adolescents and 20 healthy controls matched in age and gender were compared on a neuropsychological test of cognitive inhibition (Color-Word Interference Test) and a self-report measure of inhibition ability (BRIEF-A). Our analyses revealed that the trauma exposed group differed significantly on the self-reported measure of inhibitory control compared to the control group, but there were no differences between groups on the objective measures of cognitive inhibition. Follow-up analyses with subgroups in the trauma exposed group based on PTSD symptomatology (PTSD + and PTSD-) and the control group revealed that the PTSD- group showed significantly better results than both the PTSD + and the control group on the measures of inhibitory control. Moreover, the follow-up analyses showed that the PTSD + group showed significantly poorer results from the other two groups on the measures of inhibitory control and self-reported inhibition. We conclude that impaired inhibitory control, measured both objectively and by self-reported questionnaire, is related to PTSD symptomatology. Findings suggest that inhibitory dysfunctions may be a vulnerability factor for the development of PTSD symptomatology in trauma exposed adolescents, and thus it seems that the ability to exhibit inhibitory control could be a possible resilience factor to prevent the development of PTSD symptoms.
... Working memory, the ability to actively hold, manipulate, and update information in one's mind over a short period, is one of the main executive functions supported by the prefrontal cortex [11,12]. Due to its limited capacity, the removal of irrelevant information is essential to making room for new information and maintaining prioritized content [13,14]. Recent behavioral and neurophysiological evidence supports the existence of an information removal process in working memory [15]. ...
Background
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is related to working memory impairment. Since patients with OCD have difficulty controlling their obsessive thoughts, removal of irrelevant information might be important in the pathophysiology of OCD. However, little is known about brain activity during the removal of information from working memory in patients with OCD. Our goal was to explore potential deficits in inhibitory function related to working memory processes in patients with OCD.
Methods
Sixteen OCD patients and 20 healthy controls (HCs) were recruited. We compared in prefrontal alpha and beta band activity derived from magnetoencephalography (MEG) between patients with OCD and HCs during multiple phases of information processing associated with working memory, especially in post-trial period of the visuospatial working memory task (the delayed matching-to‐sample task), which is presumed to be related to the information removal process of working memory.
Results
Prefrontal post-trial beta power change (presumed to occur at high levels during the post-trial period) exhibited significant reductions in patients with OCD compared to HCs. In addition, the post-trial beta power change was negatively correlated with Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory–Revised total scores in patients with OCD.
Conclusions
These findings suggest that impairment in the removal of information from working memory might be a key mechanism underlying the inability of OCD patients to rid themselves of their obsessions.
... This pattern is referred to as a directed forgetting effect (DFE) and has been attributed to either the selective rehearsal of the R items (and passive decay of the F items; e.g., Basden et al., 1993;Conway & Fthenaki, 2003;Hourihan & Taylor, 2006) or the application of one or more active (potentially inhibitory) mechanisms to prevent the F items from being adequately encoded or retrieved (e.g., Fawcett & Taylor, 2008;Zacks et al., 1996). Either account generally accepts that participants initially engage in maintenance rehearsal of the study item, awaiting the memory instruction, after which R items are rehearsed and F items receive minimal additional processing; however, they disagree with respect to the mechanism through which the cessation of rehearsal is implemented, with traditional selective rehearsal accounts adopting a "passive" perspective and alternate accounts positing one or more control processes (for a review of neural evidence, see Anderson & Hanslmayr, 2014). ...
The item-method directed forgetting paradigm is a common laboratory task used to measure memory control. While impaired memory control may contribute to the development and/or maintenance of a variety of psychological disorders, comparisons between clinical and nonclinical groups using this paradigm have been inconsistent-even within the same disorder. A systematic search for related articles utilizing clinical populations was conducted revealing 823 articles of which 36 met inclusion criteria. Raw mean differences were calculated and aggregated using Bayesian multilevel random-effects models. These models revealed a significant difference in the magnitude of directed forgetting between clinical and control populations, such that clinical populations (collapsing across all disorders or combining only the critical anxiety and depression clusters) exhibited a reduced directed forgetting effect. This difference tended to be larger in clinical (as opposed to clinical-analog) populations and in older samples. These results support the notion that item-method directed forgetting provides a suitable measure of memory control sensitive to real-world control deficits and further implies that memory control deficits may contribute to mental illness (although causality remains to be determined). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
... Updating can also be induced by cues that convey the relevance of information, presented during or shortly after the acquisition of material. A prominent example is directed forgetting, which encompasses instructions to remember or forget studied material (for reviews, see Anderson & Hanslmayr, 2014;MacLeod, 1998;Sahakyan et al., 2013). In item-method directed forgetting (IMDF), subjects study a list of items and, after study of each single item, receive either a remember or a forget cue, providing information on whether the particular item will later be tested, or not. ...
... This line of work sees forgetting as a more active process, contrary to the assumption of a merely passive dropping of TBF items from further rehearsal. Inhibition has also been argued to operate in concert with selective rehearsal processes (Anderson & Hanslmayr, 2014;Fellner et al., 2020). ...
People can intentionally forget studied material when cued to do so. Corresponding evidence has arisen from studies on item-method directed forgetting, in which participants are asked to forget single items directly upon presentation. We measured memory performance of to-be-remembered (TBR) and to-be-forgotten (TBF) items across retention intervals of up to 1 week and fitted power functions of time to the observed recall (Experiment 1) and recognition (Experiment 2) rates. In both experiments and each retention interval condition, memory performance for the TBR items was higher than for the TBF items, supporting the view that directed forgetting effects are lasting. Recall and recognition rates of both TBR and TBF items were well fit by the power function. However, the relative forgetting rates of the two item types differed, with a higher forgetting rate for the TBF than the TBR items. The findings are consistent with the view that TBR and TBF items differ (mainly) in recruitment of rehearsal processes and resulting memory strength.
