Humanism
The Awe Effect: The Hidden Emotion That Unites Groups and Explains Winning People Over
06 November 2025
Forgetting is Relief, Not Distress, for Your Brain
For most of us, that “uhh… it’s on the tip of my tongue” moment is an alarm signal: I’m getting old, I’m freezing up, something’s wrong. However, the opposite might be true. The latest research clearly states: forgetting is not a bug; it’s a feature. And someone’s running the show. That “someone” is dopamine—the chemical traffic manager that erases data like a cold-hearted server administrator before you even truly manage to store it.
The Researchers’ Brutal Test Yielded Surprising Results
Scientists at Flinders University in Australia conducted a brutal memory test. First, they blocked the dopamine production ability in roundworms (C. elegans) and gave them a task: associating a specific smell with food. The finding was one of the strangest in years: the dopamine-deprived worms remembered the association four times longer.
Therefore, it’s not a lack of dopamine that impairs memory. It is dopamine that actively presses the DELETE key. Subsequently, the scientists took the experiment further and repeated it on fruit flies. The result? Identical. As soon as dopamine returned—the forgetting mechanism immediately switched back on.
Memory fact:
The human mind naturally discards information it deems unimportant, and working memory can hold only about 7 digits at once — roughly the length of a typical phone number.
The human mind naturally discards information it deems unimportant, and working memory can hold only about 7 digits at once — roughly the length of a typical phone number.
Understanding Why We Forget Things: Brain’s Cognitive Hygiene
Imagine your mind threw nothing away. You remember everything: a random number from a poster at the bus stop, a casual phrase from a shampoo commercial, the name of an extra in a movie you didn’t even like. Every single trivial detail stays inside. Your brain drowns in informational garbage. The system begins to grind slower. New memories have nowhere to anchor. Decisions become heavy, and thinking—sluggish.
That is precisely why forgetting is necessary. It’s not a mistake; it’s cognitive hygiene. It’s background cleaning. It is the process that keeps you sane. Your brain tosses out what it deems unnecessary—just as you delete spam from your email to make room in your inbox for truly important things.
This Discovery Also Has a Dark Side
And here is where things get truly serious. The same dopamine system that, in a healthy version, manages memory order, starts throwing sand in the gears of the brain when dysregulated. It is precisely in this area that researchers observe disturbances in patients with Parkinson’s disease and certain forms of dementia.
That’s why this discovery from Australia is generating such buzz in the world of neuroscience: for the first time, we have not a metaphor, but a concrete biological switch—an ON/OFF mechanism that can determine whether you remember or forget. The study fundamentally changes why we forget things.
Optimizing Your Memory: What You Can Do Now
Currently, over 55 million people worldwide suffer from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia that destroy information processing and memory. This number will continue to grow. By 2050, the number of sufferers is expected to increase to as many as 139 million. This has consequences not only in terms of overburdening the healthcare system but will also affect society as a whole.
Consequently, prevention is better than cure. Although there is currently no effective treatment for diseases associated with excessive memory loss, it is worthwhile to support your body to keep it in the best shape possible. So, what should you do? Scientists are clear:
- Balanced meals
- Regular cognitive challenges (reading, learning, crosswords)
- Consistent sleep schedule
- Stress and glucose control
Read this article in Polish: Zapominasz niektóre rzeczy? Spokojnie — mózg robi to celowo
