ArticleNature communications2022
Inducing forgetting of unwanted memories through subliminal reactivation.
Article in Nature communications, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Circuit-informed modulation of traumatic memory in PTSD: integrating extinction, suppression, and reconsolidation.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Review
- Reducing PTSD symptoms through unconscious intervention.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Shadow-Induced Forgetting in a Game-Based Paradigm on Nonclinical Adults and Its Effects on Consciousness, Emotional Valence, and Temporal Dynamics: Crossover Study.JMIR serious games · 2025Article
- The effectiveness and adaptiveness of suppressing unwanted thoughts.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Review
- Targeting memory of embedded positive verbal content indirectly modulates negative visual memory.iScience · 2025Article
- Brain mechanisms underlying the inhibitory control of thought.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2025Review
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- Article
- Neural mechanisms of domain-general inhibitory control.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2023Review
- Emotional associative memory is disrupted by directed forgetting.Communications psychology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Processes that might facilitate the forgetting of unwanted experiences typically require the actual or imagined re-exposure to reminders of the event, which is aversive and carries risks to people. But it is unclear whether awareness of aversive content is necessary for effective voluntary forgetting. Disrupting hippocampal function through retrieval suppression induces an amnesic shadow that impairs the encoding and stabilization of unrelated memories that are activated near in time to people's effort to suppress retrieval. Building on this mechanism, here we successfully disrupt retention of unpleasant memories by subliminally reactivating them within this amnesic shadow. Critically, whereas unconscious forgetting occurs on these affective memories, the amnesic shadow itself is induced by conscious suppression of unrelated and benign neutral memories, avoiding conscious re-exposure of unwelcome content. Combining the amnesic shadow with subliminal reactivation may offer a new approach to voluntary forgetting that bypasses the unpleasantness in conscious exposure to unwanted memories.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.