Forgiving someone might not erase painful memories, but it can subtly update them, making past hurts feel less upsetting. It’s less “forgive and forget,” and more “forgive and update.”

Psychologists have long known that forgiveness is crucial for healing rifts and keeping social bonds strong. Folk wisdom even advises us to “forgive and forget” after a wrong, implying that saying you forgive someone should make the bad memory vanish.

But forgiving doesn’t actually make you forget, notes Duke neuroscientist Felipe de Brigard: “When you forgive someone for a wrongdoing, you don’t forget the event. But once you forgive, the memory doesn’t hurt as much.” Indeed, past studies hinted that forgiving someone can blunt the memory of their misdeed. What hasn’t been clear is how that happens in the brain. Is the memory simply erased, or does it get rewritten?

New research reveals that physical changes in the brain during adolescence, such as the expansion of the hippocampus, are closely linked to whether a child’s ADHD symptoms will fade away, persist, or worsen over time.

Traumatic memories are a complicated psychological phenomenon, where some experiences are never forgotten but can only be remembered in fragments. Traumatic memories are not as complete or coherent as regular memories. Even if its details are absent, the actual event can still make a strong impression. Trauma is the result of an extremely stressful, frightening or upsetting event that is hard to cope with or feel we have no control over. These experiences may be a one-time thing or repeated over time.

A new study locates the brain’s symbolic engine for compositional generalization within the ventral premotor cortex.