Thursday, March 31, 2016

Memory replay prioritizes high-reward memories

It sounds like this is likely a factor in the cases of people who stay with abusive partners.



Public Release: 12-Feb-2016
Memory replay prioritizes high-reward memories
University of California - Davis

Why do we remember some events, places and things, but not others? Our brains prioritize rewarding memories over others, and reinforce them by replaying them when we are at rest, according to new research from the University of California, Davis, Center for Neuroscience, published Feb. 11 in the journal Neuron.

"Rewards help you remember things, because you want future rewards," said Professor Charan Ranganath, a UC Davis neuroscientist and senior author on the paper. "The brain prioritizes memories that are going to be useful for future decisions."

It's estimated that we only retain detailed memories for a small proportion of the events of each day, Ranganath said. People with very detailed memories become overwhelmed with information. So if the brain is going to filter information and decide what to remember, it makes sense to save those memories that might be most important for obtaining rewards in the future.

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