Concept · Cognitive Bias: Memory biases and distortions
Memory inhibition
Origin: Anderson, 1994
Biological Parallel
Dominant wolves actively suppress subordinate behaviors—neural networks similarly inhibit competing memories to strengthen target retrieval. Actively suppressing irrelevant memories sharpens focus on relevant patterns, like pruning weak branches to strengthen the trunk. Memory inhibition is adaptive filtering: the brain doesn't just strengthen signal, it actively weakens noise to improve prediction accuracy.