The human mind not only has the mechanisms to learn. It also contains tools at the cellular level to forget unnecessary information , according to research from Lund University in Sweden, published in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). This new study sheds light on the phenomenon of theoretical learning, which until now was difficult to understand.
The starting point is that both humans and animals are capable of learning to associate a certain acoustic tone or light signal with a blast of air that reaches the eye; then the air prompts the subject to blink, and finally they will blink the moment they hear the tone again or see the light signal. But the strangest thing is that if the acoustic tone or the light signal are presented at the same time as the air blast, the association becomes confused and we are not able to make the relationship between stimuli.
According to the neuroscientist and professor Germund Hesslow, co-author of the research, “two stimuli produce worse results than just one. This seems contrary to common sense, but what it indicates is that the brain tries to save energy. In that sense, his colleague Anders Rasmussen, another of the scientists involved, has shown that when the brain has sufficiently learned and experienced a certain association, some neurons that act as a brake on the learning mechanism are activated.
“It seems as if the part of the brain that has learned the association, the cerebellum, is saying to its teacher: ‘I already know this, please don’t continue.’ When there are two associations, the brake becomes more powerful. The result is forgetting, even if only temporarily, “ Hesslow explains. Remembering and keeping unnecessary associative pathways in memory is a waste of energy for the brain.
Researchers at Lund University have tested and described the mechanisms of learning, memory, and forgetting in animals, but they believe they are very similar in the human brain. Hence, these findings are of great interest to neuroscientists as well as to psychologists and educators.
