Forgetting on purpose…
What???…
Research on patients with epilepsy whom had electrodes temporarily implanted near specific regions of the brain show that when we purposely have an intention to forget or not remember something, the pre-frontal cortex exerts an influence over the learning centre (the hippocampus) to halt or reverse the storage of information in long term memory.
And this influence has been measured in terms of frequency of brain waves.
While ‘forgetting on purpose’, Theta brainwaves (the biggest peak being about 4hz within the 3-5hz range) increased in the pre-frontal cortex and by comparison, high Theta,Alpha and Beta brainwaves (the biggest peak being about 8.5hz within the 6-18hz range) increased in the hippocampus.
A significant amount more information flowed from the pre-frontal cortex (PFC) to the hippocampus (HC) than the other way during this memory experiment and there was a time lag to the response from the HC to the PFC showing a type of hierarchy of importance to the regions in processing memory.
This combination in particular seems to help with forgetting information by way of the persons intention to not remember it. Intention alone being enough to alter our brainwaves (interesting).
Potentially for us as brainwave enthusiasts, this could mean using a low Theta brain frequency while processing trauma, could aid in the releasing of the strength of the memory while simultaneously being in a deep trance state open to positive suggestion to do so.
Obviously before attempting to help someone with such things adequate training on dealing with trauma is necessary.
A subject I won’t get into here.
Pretty cool to know that intention alone can exert such a quick influence on our brainwaves. 🙂