Rethinking Memory Impairments: Retrieval Failure

A canonical view in the neuroscience of learning and memory literature is that failures in memory expression reflect storage failures, and hence amnesic manipulations following training or following memory reactivation can permanently erase memory traces. In this review, we analyse extant literatures from the learning and memory domains suggesting that most if not all of these memory deficits can be restored with the appropriate retrieval cues. We contend that all experience-dependent manipulations conducted immediately after training or following memory reactivation result in new learning, which interferes with the original learning and hence makes information highly dependent on retrieval cues for memory expression. Thus, although acquisition and storage mechanisms are surely important, memory retrieval is a critical component of memory performance, with numerous findings from behavioural and neurobiological studies all converging on this general stance. These conclusions invite a rethinking of the learning and memory literatures and provide new avenues for research.