An international team of scientists has found brain regions that are activated when a person tries to forget something. The discovery will help develop an effective treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. The research results are published in the journal Current Biology.
A lot of neuroscience research is focused on the study of memory. Therefore, the process of memorization and the structure of human memory in general are already quite well described. However, scientists could not figure out how to make themselves forget the information, and how the brain will work in this case. A group of neuroscientists from Germany, Switzerland, Holland and the UK have investigated what happens in the brain when a person deliberately tries to forget something. It turned out that two structures are responsible for this: the prefrontal cortex - the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain - and the hippocampus - a paired structure in the temporal regions.
For their study, the scientists recruited patients with epilepsy, who had previously been implanted with electrodes in the brain (this is done to track brain activity and decide whether to undergo surgery). In total, 22 people took part in the experiment. Scientists called the volunteers a number of words, some of them were asked to remember, and others - to forget. The participants remembered the words that had to be forgotten worse. Throughout the experiment, electrodes recorded brain activity.
After the experiment, the scientists collected signals from the electrodes and analyzed them. It turned out that when the participants tried hard to forget something, characteristic rhythmic activity occurred in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. The hippocampus has long been known as the structure responsible for memorization. Now it turns out that in the process of forgetting, the prefrontal cortex acts on the hippocampus and makes it "forget" information.
According to the authors, the discovery could help create new drugs for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. Patients with this condition often have unpleasant memories over and over again. The results of the new study will help people with this severe mental condition shed their fearful memories.