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Forgetting Unwanted Memories: Active Forgetting and Implications for the Development of Psychological Disorders

Intrusive memories are a common feature of many psychopathologies, and suppression-induced forgetting of unwanted memories appears as a critical ability to preserve mental health. In recent years, biological and cognitive studies converged in revealing that forgetting is due to active processes. Rec...

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Autores principales: Costanzi, Marco, Cianfanelli, Beatrice, Santirocchi, Alessandro, Lasaponara, Stefano, Spataro, Pietro, Rossi-Arnaud, Clelia, Cestari, Vincenzo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8066077/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33810436
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jpm11040241
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author Costanzi, Marco
Cianfanelli, Beatrice
Santirocchi, Alessandro
Lasaponara, Stefano
Spataro, Pietro
Rossi-Arnaud, Clelia
Cestari, Vincenzo
author_facet Costanzi, Marco
Cianfanelli, Beatrice
Santirocchi, Alessandro
Lasaponara, Stefano
Spataro, Pietro
Rossi-Arnaud, Clelia
Cestari, Vincenzo
author_sort Costanzi, Marco
collection PubMed
description Intrusive memories are a common feature of many psychopathologies, and suppression-induced forgetting of unwanted memories appears as a critical ability to preserve mental health. In recent years, biological and cognitive studies converged in revealing that forgetting is due to active processes. Recent neurobiological studies provide evidence on the active role of main neurotransmitter systems in forgetting, suggesting that the brain actively works to suppress retrieval of unwanted memories. On the cognitive side, there is evidence that voluntary and involuntary processes (here termed “intentional” and “incidental” forgetting, respectively) contribute to active forgetting. In intentional forgetting, an inhibitory control mechanism suppresses awareness of unwanted memories at encoding or retrieval. In incidental forgetting, retrieval practice of some memories involuntarily suppresses the retrieval of other related memories. In this review we describe recent findings on deficits in active forgetting observed in psychopathologies, like post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Moreover, we report studies in which the role of neurotransmitter systems, known to be involved in the pathogenesis of mental disorders, has been investigated in active forgetting paradigms. The possibility that biological and cognitive mechanisms of active forgetting could be considered as hallmarks of the early onset of psychopathologies is also discussed.
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spelling pubmed-80660772021-04-25 Forgetting Unwanted Memories: Active Forgetting and Implications for the Development of Psychological Disorders Costanzi, Marco Cianfanelli, Beatrice Santirocchi, Alessandro Lasaponara, Stefano Spataro, Pietro Rossi-Arnaud, Clelia Cestari, Vincenzo J Pers Med Review Intrusive memories are a common feature of many psychopathologies, and suppression-induced forgetting of unwanted memories appears as a critical ability to preserve mental health. In recent years, biological and cognitive studies converged in revealing that forgetting is due to active processes. Recent neurobiological studies provide evidence on the active role of main neurotransmitter systems in forgetting, suggesting that the brain actively works to suppress retrieval of unwanted memories. On the cognitive side, there is evidence that voluntary and involuntary processes (here termed “intentional” and “incidental” forgetting, respectively) contribute to active forgetting. In intentional forgetting, an inhibitory control mechanism suppresses awareness of unwanted memories at encoding or retrieval. In incidental forgetting, retrieval practice of some memories involuntarily suppresses the retrieval of other related memories. In this review we describe recent findings on deficits in active forgetting observed in psychopathologies, like post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Moreover, we report studies in which the role of neurotransmitter systems, known to be involved in the pathogenesis of mental disorders, has been investigated in active forgetting paradigms. The possibility that biological and cognitive mechanisms of active forgetting could be considered as hallmarks of the early onset of psychopathologies is also discussed. MDPI 2021-03-26 /pmc/articles/PMC8066077/ /pubmed/33810436 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jpm11040241 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ).
spellingShingle Review
Costanzi, Marco
Cianfanelli, Beatrice
Santirocchi, Alessandro
Lasaponara, Stefano
Spataro, Pietro
Rossi-Arnaud, Clelia
Cestari, Vincenzo
Forgetting Unwanted Memories: Active Forgetting and Implications for the Development of Psychological Disorders
title Forgetting Unwanted Memories: Active Forgetting and Implications for the Development of Psychological Disorders
title_full Forgetting Unwanted Memories: Active Forgetting and Implications for the Development of Psychological Disorders
title_fullStr Forgetting Unwanted Memories: Active Forgetting and Implications for the Development of Psychological Disorders
title_full_unstemmed Forgetting Unwanted Memories: Active Forgetting and Implications for the Development of Psychological Disorders
title_short Forgetting Unwanted Memories: Active Forgetting and Implications for the Development of Psychological Disorders
title_sort forgetting unwanted memories: active forgetting and implications for the development of psychological disorders
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8066077/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33810436
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jpm11040241
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