There are plenty of people who might benefit from intentionally forgetting certain memories—those who’ve been in combat, or suffered some form of abuse, for instance, and consequently struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder. Now researchers at Dartmouth report in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review that they’ve figured out a way to help people do that through “contextually mediated intentional forgetting.”
In less academic jargon: If we want to forget certain memories, we should try to clear our minds of the context related to them. “It’s like intentionally pushing thoughts of your grandmother’s cooking out of your mind if you don’t want to think about your grandmother at that moment,” says lead author Jeremy Manning in a press release. READ MORE
