memory and the digital: re-membering

Reliance on digital devices, and the trust we place in them, can resemble a human relationship. The feelings are established in the same way—through experience. Repeated experience with a reliable individual builds a ‘schema’ or association for that individual in our memory, telling us that this person can be depended on. If a digital device is continually reliable then we will build that into our schema of that device.

Remembering, it seems, is a double-edged sword. Research in humans and animals points to the pivotal role of retrieval in shaping and stabilizing memories. However, the remembering process also induces forgetting of other memories that hinder the retrieval of the memory that we seek. It has been hypothesized that this surprising dark side of remembering is caused by an inhibitory control mechanism that suppresses competing memories and causes forgetting; this putative process is adaptive because it limits current and future distraction from competitors. However, no study has ever directly observed memories as they are suppressed by this hypothesized inhibitory control mechanism. Behavioral methods are, by their nature, blind to the internal processes unfolding during retrieval, and neuroscience has lacked methods capable of isolating neural activity associated with individual memories. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we tested for the existence of the hypothesized adaptive forgetting process by developing a template-based pattern-tracking approach that quantifies the neural activation state of single memory traces. Thus, we tracked the fate of behaviorally invisible traces, providing a window into the suppression process thought to underlie adaptive forgetting in the human brain.