New findings support the broad principle that retrieval suppression is achieved by regulating hippocampal processes in tandem with domain-specific brain regions involved in reinstating specific content, in an activity-dependent fashion. Upsetting events sometimes trigger intrusive images that cause distress and that may contribute to psychiatric disorders. People often respond to intrusions by suppressing their retrieval, […]

In a recent issue of Nature Communications, we show that suppressing past events induces an “amnesic shadow” for experiences near in time to suppression, consistent with a global disruption to hippocampal function. The work has been featured in the Guardian and other press outlets, highlighted in Nature and by the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and discussed in numerous science blogs.