If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the amount of information you're dealing with, then you may need to forget some of it, according to researchers at the University of Glasgow. A new study reveals that forgetting is a key process in learning — the researchers discovered that "memory instability," which prevents us from holding onto new memories, is integral for the brain's ability to take skills and experiences and use them in new situations.
In the study, subjects learned a memory task at 9 a.m. followed quickly by another task. They were then retested at 9 p.m. on the same initial memory task. The task consisted of a word list that was a repeating sequence of 12 simple words and a skilled action that was a new sequence of movements not far off from what we do when we enter our PIN at an ATM machine.
The researchers found that learning was passed from actions to words and vice versa. For example, learning the list of words increased the ability of subjects to learn a new skilled action. Rather than simple knowledge transfer, the information passed between these diverse situations was considered a "higher abstract level," and learning only transferred when a memory was unstable.
"Our work shows that an unstable memory is a key component of the mechanism for learning transfer. An unstable memory prevents learning from being rigidly linked to one task; instead, it allows learning to be applied flexibly," said Edwin Robertson, co-author of the study, in a press release. "An unstable memory is in a privileged state: only when unstable can a memory communicate with and transfer knowledge to affect the acquisition of a subsequent memory."
The results were published in the Dec. 17 issue of Current Biology.
