The Biology of Forgetting – A Perspective

By Ronald L. Davis, Yi Zhong. 2017

290 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Pioneering research studies, beginning with those using Drosophila, have identified several molecular and cellular mechanisms for active forgetting. The currently known mechanisms for active forgetting include neurogenesis-based forgetting, interference-based forgetting, and intrinsic forgetting, the latter term describing the brain’s chronic signaling systems that function to slowly degrade molecular and cellular memory traces. The best-characterized pathway for intrinsic forgetting includes “forgetting cells” that release dopamine onto engram cells, mobilizing a signaling pathway that terminates in the activation of Rac1/cofilin to effect changes in the actin cytoskeleton and neuron/synapse structure. Intrinsic forgetting may be the default state of the brain, constantly promoting memory erasure and competing with processes that promote memory stability like consolidation. A better understanding of active forgetting will provide insights into the brain’s memory management system and human brain disorders that alter active forgetting mechanisms.

Subfields: Cell Biology, Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cell Biology

1. Qian Li
2. Yi Zhong
3. Liyuan Wang
4. Jun Zhu
5. Mingtian Zhang
6. Xuchen Zhang
7. Hang Su
8. Xingxing Zhang

In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience

1. Qian Li
2. Yi Zhong
3. Liyuan Wang
4. Xuchen Zhang
5. Jun Zhu
6. Xingxing Zhang
7. Hang Su
8. Mingtian Zhang

In Cognitive Neuroscience

1. Yi Zhong
2. Qian Li
3. Liyuan Wang
4. Jun Zhu
5. Mingtian Zhang
6. Xingxing Zhang
7. Hang Su
8. Chunyan Miao

Citations in the corpus

• Incorporating neuro-inspired adaptability for continual learning in artificial intelligence (2023, positive): “…deeply dissecting its underlying mechanisms from molecular to synaptic structural levels, where activation of the molecular signalling that mediates active forgetting initially leads to rapid growth of synaptic structures, but prolonged activation instead leads to their shrinkage 19,30,42,60–64 .”
• Distilling Causal Effect of Data in Class-Incremental Learning (2021, background): “In most practical scenarios, the training data are streamed and thus the systems cannot store all the learning history: for animate systems, the neurons are genetically designed to forget old stimuli to save energy [6, 34]; for machines, old data and parameters are discarded due to limited storage, ”
• A Unified and General Framework for Continual Learning (2024, background): “On one hand, forgetting can be beneficial for the human brain in various situations, as it helps in efficient information processing and decision-making (Davis & Zhong, 2017; Richards & Frankland, 2017; Gravitz, 2019; Wang et al., 2023b).”
• Neuronal mechanisms underlying innate and learned olfactory processing in Drosophila. (2019, background): “297 298 Memories that are acquired but not consolidated rapidly decay, discarding irrelevant 299 information in a brain with limited resources [95].”
• Active Protection: Learning-Activated Raf/MAPK Activity Protects Labile Memory from Rac1-Independent Forgetting. (2018, unknown): “…and active forgetting of fast-decaying labile memory in Drosophila aversive olfactory classical conditioning tasks (for reviews, see Davis, 2005; Davis and Zhong, 2017; Heisenberg, 2003; Keene and Waddell, 2007; Margulies et al., 2005) provide us with a unique opportunity to dissect the…”
• Dopamine Neurons Mediate Learning and Forgetting through Bidirectional Modulation of a Memory Trace (2018, unknown): “Changes in the response properties of a MBOn involved in memory retrieval that are created by aversive learning represent cellular memory traces that are likely components of the aversive memory engram (Davis and Zhong, 2017).”
• Genetic dissection of active forgetting in labile and consolidated memories in Drosophila (2019, background): “F has been recently proposed to be a critical component of a healthy memory management system by providing flexibility and generalization ability (1, 2).”
• Distinct dopamine receptor pathways underlie the temporal sensitivity of associative learning (2019, background): “Prior work in both Drosophila and mammals has suggested memory retention is regulated by multiple mechanisms at different timescales (Bouton, 2002; Davis and Zhong, 2017; Richards and Frankland, 2017).”