Decades of research have focused on how the brain acquires information, resulting in theories that suggest short-term memories are encoded in the brain as patterns of activity among neurons, while long-term memories reflect a change in the connections between neurons. What hasn’t received nearly as much attention from memory researchers is how the brain forgets. This article was published in Quanta Magazine in July 2018. This story is now available as a Quanta Magazine Podcast, narrated by Susan Valot.
IMAGE: Dominican University