title: Inducing amnesia through systemic suppression.
abstract: Hippocampal damage profoundly disrupts the ability to store new memories of life events. Amnesic windows might also occur in healthy people due to disturbed hippocampal function arising during mental processes that systemically reduce hippocampal activity. Intentionally suppressing memory retrieval (retrieval stopping) reduces hippocampal activity via control mechanisms mediated by the lateral prefrontal cortex. Here we show that when people suppress retrieval given a reminder of an unwanted memory, they are considerably more likely to forget unrelated experiences from periods surrounding suppression. This amnesic shadow follows a dose-response function, becomes more pronounced after practice suppressing retrieval, exhibits characteristics indicating disturbed hippocampal function, and is predicted by reduced hippocampal activity. These findings indicate that stopping retrieval engages a suppression mechanism that broadly compromises hippocampal processes and that hippocampal stabilization processes can be interrupted strategically. Cognitively triggered amnesia constitutes an unrecognized forgetting process that may account for otherwise unexplained memory lapses following trauma.
authors.affiliation: Bard College, Psychology Program, PO Box 5000, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York 12504, USA.
authors.forename: Justin C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Hulbert
authors.affiliation: Medical Research Council, Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge CB2 7EF, UK.
authors.forename: Richard N
authors.initials: RN
authors.lastname: Henson
authors.affiliation: Medical Research Council, Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge CB2 7EF, UK.|Behavioural and Clinical Neurosciences Institute, Sir William Hardy Building, Downing Street, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EB, UK.
authors.forename: Michael C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Anderson
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000647:Amnesia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology / Q000503:physiopathology; D005260:Female; D059907:Functional Neuroimaging; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000502:physiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D012094:Repression, Psychology; D055815:Young Adult