azubaba90

[azubaba90]

Forgetting: The Benefits Of Not Remembering

                              By

                                         Dr. Scott Small

This book was written and inspired by Dr. Scott Small an American neurologist and neuroscientist known for his work in Alzheimer’s disease and normal cognitive aging. Dr. Small’s research focuses on the hippocampus, a circuit in the brain that is a target for Alzheimer’s disease, aging and schizophrenia. Dr. Small is the director of the Alzheimer’s disease research center at Columbia university, where he is the Boriz & Rose Katz professor of neurology. He is also appointed in radiology and psychiatry where he directs the schizophrenia research program. Dr. Small graduated from the university of south Florida Health Morsani College of medicine in 1995. He also affiliated with the Emory university Hospital Midtown, Emory university hospital Forsyth with over 26 years of experience. Dr. Small also partnered with Dr. Gerard Perera, Dr. Adam Brickman and Dr. Yaakov Stern in writing on books relating to Hippocampal sub regions and the dysfunction of the Hippocampal formation among Elderly with memory decline. Attached below is a link for Dr. Small’s research for your perusal.

As we age in life, we really want to be able to remember things especially the beautiful and challenging times in our lives that shaped us to finding our various paths and continue moving in that direction. Choosing this topic, I was a bit curious of the benefits of not remembering knowing fully well that most people love to have a photographic memory of events and places all their life. Going deeper into the discussion and the reason for this topic, I learnt a lot about how the memory is formed, why forgetting is beneficial, what is meant by normal forgetting, the regions vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease, what inspired Dr. Small to this research, how information is stored in the brain and how the memory works.

According to Dr. Small, when a memory is formed, there is growth of synapses and in the process of this synapses growth communication strengthens between the neurons. Dr Small went further ahead and explained the concept of forgetting which he termed as a glitch and the failure of that mechanism to sprout new connections in the brain. Dr Small was also against the fact of photographic memory stating that if you wish for that kind of memory, you will live a miserable, lonely and uncreative life so the benefits of forgetting. He also stated that forgetting is beneficial in the case of emotional memory just like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) where the emotional memory is burning too hot that we cannot forget and suffer the consequences. The ability to forget emotional memory is important in order to live a better social life. Dr Small also talked about the normal forgetting which is natural, and we born with it. He also talked about how Alzheimer’s disease targets a part of the Hippocampus while normal aging targets the other part of the Hippocampus. He said the main cause of Alzheimer is the trafficking system jam in the neuron and the tiny part vulnerable to Alzheimer is a hub that constantly receives information. Dr Small gave a typical example that Humans are the only specie with Alzheimer despite the hub is identical in all mammals because Humans have more spokes bombarding this hub and it is coming from the cortex. He said his purpose for this research is to understand what goes wrong in regard to memory and pathological forgetting.

Furthermore, I learnt how memory is formed, how the brain works and stores information, how forgetting is beneficial for our emotional memory, and lastly the main cause of Alzheimer disease and how it develops in the brain.