Forget About It!

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. In Chinese mythology, Meng Po is sometimes known as the goddess of oblivion. She polices the land of the dead and has a special responsibility. She makes sure that souls on their way to being reincarnated do not remember their past lives. To ensure this, she prepares a soup with five ingredients.

Her five flavored soup of oblivion produces immediate and permanent amnesia. The soul can now proceed to be reincarnated with no memory of previous lives. There are rare occasions when spirits fail to drink the five flavored soup, and when these souls are reincarnated, They become humans who can remember their past lives. Nearly every culture in the world has stories and legends about memory and forgetfulness.

Our ability to remember long-ago events is a signature accomplishment of the brain. Our inability to remember important things is an endless source of frustration. Today on the show, and in a companion story on Hidden Brain Plus, we examine the science of forgetting. We look at why our minds hold on to some memories for a lifetime but discard others within seconds. And we answer a question many people ask themselves: Is my forgetfulness a sign that something is wrong with me?

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