Abstract:

The intentional suppression of memory retrieval to achieve directed forgetting is a crucial adaptive function for individuals. In psychotherapy theory, such active forgetting is often associated with trauma, where in individuals actively exclude trauma-related negative memories from awareness to reduce unpleasant emotional experiences. Based on the "go/no-go" task paradigm, researchers developed the "think/no-think" (TNT) paradigm, and through this paradigm, they have revealed that individuals can achieve active forgetting by suppressing the retrieval of previously encoded memories. Patients with depressive disorders often exhibit cognitive processing biases toward negative information. Compared to healthy populations, they demonstrate impaired memory retrieval suppression in TNT tasks, especially for negative memories. This deficit in retrieval suppression makes negative memories more susceptible to reactivation, triggering negative emotions and perpetuating a vicious cycle. Relevant neuroimaging results show that during memory retrieval suppression, the lateral prefrontal lobe exerts top-down control through relevant regions to modulate memory processing of hippocampus, thereby blocking intentional recall. Abnormalities in the prefrontal-hippocampal inhibitory pathway and hyperactivation of the amygdala in depressed individuals may be the underlying neural mechanisms for their impaired suppression of negative memory retrieval.This article provides a review focusing on the negative memory bias exhibited in depressed individuals in the TNT task and the exploration of its underlying mechanisms. It summarizes relevant research findings with the aim of offering references for the development of precise psychotherapies and novel approaches targeting the improvement of specific symptom clusters.

Key words: depressive disorder, memory retrieval suppression, negative memory bias