Half-forgotten memories can be resurrected using “mental time travel,” a new study suggests.
The research, published Monday (July 28) in the journal PNAS, showed that a person can rejuvenate their fading memories by recalling the emotions and thoughts they had when they first stored that memory. In fact, the researchers found that the refurbished memories were then almost as retrievable as newly formed memories.
The study specifically focused on memories of learned information, as opposed to memories of events, for instance. When we learn something, that new memory teeters on a forgetting curve, like a boulder perched atop a tall mountain. As that boulder rolls downhill, we lose some details of the memory. But as it approaches the base of the memory mountain, where the incline is less steep, the rate of forgetting slows down.
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