Remembering causes forgetting

The research results of the joint work of Fellow of the Zukunftskolleg, Simon Hanslmayr with Prof. Mikael Johansson and with Dr. Gerd Waldhauser (University of Lund, Sweden) showed for the first time that retrieval of associated memory contents inhibits interfering contents which leads to the forgetting of the latter. A distinction between the patterns of contents which have to be recalled and of interfering contents was achieved by means of EEG.  This method provides direct evidence for the reactivation and inhibition of the interfering memory contents. The findings were published in the "The Journal of Neuroscience“(February 8, 2012 • 32(6):1953–1961 • 1953) under the title "Alpha/Beta Oscillations Indicate Inhibition of Interfering Visual Memories".