1 Invited editorial Freud and memory neurobiology

Recent experimental studies and clinical applications have brought about two gigantic contributions by Freud to the current knowledge on memory suppression and/or inhibition. Such inhibition or suppression is inherent to our nature. On the one hand, we need to avoid the access of many memories to consciousness because evoking them would be harmful or unbearable (fears, humiliations, etc.). On the other hand, we have to do it, because we should remember or learn other memories, and recent studies have indicated that our mnemonic systems, especially those of the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, are quickly saturated. One of the two Freudian contributions to be briefly discussed here is the discovery of repression, which is a key topic for psychoanalysis, due to its usefulness in daily life and due to its importance in pathology. A study by John D. Gabrieli et al. (2004), using functional magnetic resonance, demonstrated that when the brain excludes the expression of undesired memories from consciousness, there are: a) inhibition of evoking those memories (repression); b) activation of the anterolateral prefrontal cortex (involved in working memory); c) inhibition of hippocampus activity. The hippocampus is the “maestro ” of the “orchestra ” of cortical areas involved in evoking memories (see references in my book A arte de esquecer [The art of forgetting]1)