Reading and writing fill in the blanks
Teachers have long known that rote memorization can lead to a grasp of material that is quickly forgotten. But new research in the field of neuroscience is starting to light on the ways that brains are wired to forget—highlighting the importance of strategies to retain knowledge and make learning stick. In a recent article published in the journal Neuron, neurobiologists Blake Richards and Paul Frankland challenge the view of memory, which holds that forgetting is a process of loss—the gradual washing away of critical information our best efforts to retain it. According to Richards and Frankland, the goal of memory is not just to store information accurately but to “optimize decision-making” in chaotic, quickly changing environments. In this model of cognition, forgetting is an evolutionary strategy, a process that runs in the background of memory, evaluating and discarding information that doesn’t promote the survival of the species.