In an Alzheimer's patient, forgetting has the upper hand, while a soldier is eager to erase traumatic memories. Kennislink reports on the 'Night of Remembrance', a lecture about our memory by professor of psychology Douwe Draaisma (University of Groningen).
“Tonight we will mainly talk about forgetting, the core business of our memory. A great deal has been clarified about the brain over the past hundred years," Douwe Draaisma begins his lecture during "The Night of Remembrance in Nijmegen". He is professor of History of Psychology at the University of Groningen. “We discovered that memory is a container term, because there are many types of memory. So the question of whether you have a good memory is actually silly. Better is:what kind of memory do you have?”
Riddles about forgetting
Draaisma knows how to lighten up complicated matter about memory types and supports this with catchy examples. “Vocabulary is typical of permanent memory. Quickly remembering a phone number is again in the vein of your short-term memory”, he explains. “But if there are so many kinds of memory, are there also kinds of forgetting? For example, why are you so bad at remembering dreams? And why do photos crowd out memories? Just try to imagine what your parents looked like ten years ago!”
Then Draaisma goes on a philosophical tour. “Why do we have techniques for remembering things, but not for forgetting? And is it actually desirable to forget?” Under the guise of 'intuitions of memory', Draaisma makes the audience think again. “Is your past a sum of your memories? And we assume that the future is open and our past fixed, but is it so?”
Memory Lab
It's an exciting read. With twists and turns that sometimes cause confusion, but later on they run nicely in sync with the common thread. For example, Draaisma talks about his fascination for a TV program by Caroline Tensen:“Do you know the program 'DNA unknown?'” According to the formula, there is always someone who, because of a rumor or a letter, or whatever, suspects that his or her father is not the biological father. A DNA test follows for which the father who is suspected has donated blood. Caroline then goes through all the scenarios with the doubting son or daughter. What if he is the father? What if this isn't the case? “Whatever the result, there are always tears!”
Then the monkey comes up with something about Draaisma's fascination:“Every episode is a kind of memory laboratory. A memory with a new interpretation can take on a completely different meaning. To give an example; a woman claims that her mother used to cheat on the flower man. Her brother swears she would never do that. Until the moment he remembers that he could always play in the cab of the flower man's truck as long as he wanted, when he came by,” says Draaisma. The brother's memory of the flower man takes on a completely different meaning due to new information. Our memory is apparently not as fixed as we think.
Sum of memories
The professor also returns to the question of whether your memory is a sum of memories:“The story of your life also determines some of the memories that figure in your life. Memories give a version of your life and that can always change. So your memory is not a sum of memories. Just think of black and white television, it only came after color TV.”
Draaisma quotes a paradoxical statement by Marten Toonder, the writer and illustrator of the Olivier B. Bommel comics, who manages to capture the 'fluidity' of memories beautifully:“Something that happened in your youth is often the result of a incident at a later age.”
This paradox is also scientifically researched. The professor talks about a study in which middle-aged men are asked the same questions as when they were thirteen years old. Thirty years later, the answers they gave as adults turned out to be surprisingly often different. For example, when asked 'who makes the most decisions in the house', father could have made way for mother. Memories can apparently be overwritten by new information as you get older.
Intentionally forgot
Forgetting is not always a shortcoming. There are people who are so haunted by their past that they can no longer function normally. Think of soldiers with war trauma. Draaisma talks about a controversial 'forgetting pill' that is currently on the market. This pill is called Propranolol; a beta blocker normally used to slow your heart rate and sometimes in anxiety disorders. “The question is whether you can help people with trauma with this. At the moment, the forget effect only lasts twenty minutes. You should always have the pill at hand," says Draaisma.
Another method that is supposed to act on bad memories is EMDR:eye movement desensitation and reprocessing. This method is also controversial. Critics believe that there is insufficient evidence and understanding to safely put the method into practice. Proponents argue for the method because 'it works'.
The theory in a nutshell:You can partially erase a bad association with a past experience by disconnecting the emotional charge attached to it. This is done by recalling the bad memory and at the same time making your eyes move by following the therapist's fingers.
In this video, Dutch experts and patients have their say and you can see how EMDR works.
In Utrecht a lot of research has also been done into the method by Marcel van den Hout and Iris Engelhard. One of their findings is that EMDR works best when the distraction is neither too strong nor too weak. If you are bad at multitasking, you can benefit more from the technology. “I find that quite suggestive. It is a kind of forgetting therapy, in which roughly one third is forgotten. So the experience has changed rather than forgotten. The emotional charge is no longer what it used to be,” says Draaisma. The question is whether you should intentionally erase memories. It also shapes you into who you are. In any case, the last word has not yet been said about it.
About two hours later the lecture is over. Draaisma has told in scents and colors about forgetting, remembering and everything in between. His lecture has overwritten my understanding of memory with food that will provoke thought for a long time to come. And I suspect I'm not the only one.