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  • OUTLOOK

The forgotten part of memory

Long thought to be a glitch of memory, researchers are coming to realize that the ability to forget is crucial to how the brain works.
  1. Lauren Gravitz

    1. Lauren Gravitz is a science journalist in San Diego, California.

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Credit: Sam Falconer

Memories make us who we are. They shape our understanding of the world and help us to predict what’s coming. For more than a century, researchers have been working to understand how memories are formed and then fixed for recall in the days, weeks or even years that follow. But those scientists might have been looking at only half the picture. To understand how we remember, we must also understand how, and why, we forget.

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Nature 571, S12-S14 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02211-5

This article is part of Nature Outlook: The brain, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

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