Photos by Lee Pellegrini
Explaining the science behind memory and memory loss—including why forgetting is a crucial property of memory, as well as strategies that help people remember better—is the subject of a new book co-authored by Professor and Chair of 心理学 and Neuroscience Elizabeth A. 基辛格.
In 为什么我们会忘记 and How to Remember Better: The Science Behind Memory, 基辛格 and Boston University Professor of Neurology Andrew E. Budson, M.D., examine how memories exist in the short term and how they get stored for longer-term access, 基辛格说,. The book explains how memory influences our behavior without our awareness, underscoring the fact that what and how we remember influences everything from our social relationships to the decisions we make on a daily basis.
“When most of us talk about our memory, we are referring to our ability to bring specific past events to mind,肯辛格说。. “But memory is so much more than that, encompassing all the ways our past experiences influence our current thoughts and behavior.
“Everyone relies on memory, for everything from remembering how to type, to navigating a familiar environment, to remembering a favorite dish at a restaurant,肯辛格说。. “Yet most of us are also surprised by how our memory works—sometimes we are pleasantly surprised by what we’ve managed to remember, and other times we are frustrated by what we’ve forgotten.”
Elizabeth 基辛格
Memory is an active and cyclical process, 基辛格说,, analogous to building a structure out of blocks.
“As you experience an event, you’re representing different features of the event in different regions of the brain; one portion of your brain is representing the sounds, another the sights, another the emotions,”她说。. “A particular region of your brain, 海马体, is serving as the tape that binds those blocks together, and that stores the blueprints for how to later rebuild that memory structure.”
When we need to access that memory, we have to use the blueprints for that structure to actively rebuild memory, 她说.
“Thinking of memory in this way can help to understand how memory errors and omissions can arise. It’s easy to grab an incorrect block, perhaps one that should be in another memory structure, or to omit a set of blocks that might change the overall structure or interpretation of a past event.”
基辛格 and Budson discuss memory as a cycle because, as individuals rebuild a memory, they’re likely to update it with current information—such as, has a friend changed their appearance by growing a beard, or cutting their hair? Once updated or modified, these revised blueprints are stored again.
就这样, memory is a continually changing representation; it is not a static representation of the past,肯辛格说。.
At a time of increased attention to memory and brain health, 为什么我们会忘记 examines a range of cognitive issues that affect people on a daily basis: changes that accompany normal aging, Alzheimer’s disease, 抑郁症, 焦虑, 创伤后应激障碍, 注意力缺陷多动症, and other disorders—including COVID brain fog.
As they incorporated their own findings, as well as the body of research on the subject, the co-authors were surprised to discover that memory is not really about the past.
“Memory can be thought of as a powerful source of data that the brain can use to make sense of the present moment and to make predictions about the future,肯辛格说. “Memory holds onto the features that are going to be the most useful pieces of data for the brain to use for these purposes. 大多数时候, those features don’t include very specific details about an experience but rather are broader representations of the gist or general concept of what happened.”
为什么我们会忘记 and How to Remember Better offers evidence-based lessons and strategies readers can use to improve their memory, including:
•Ways to control what you remember and what you forget
•Ways to distinguish between a true and false memory
•Effective methods to study for an exam
•How exercise, nutrition, alcohol, cannabis, sleep, mindfulness, and music affect memory
•How to remember people’s names, 50 digits of Pi, and anything else you desire
“We hope that by reading this book, individuals will come to understand their memories in a broader way and will benefit from science-backed strategies to minimize unwanted forgetting,肯辛格说。.
Ed Hayward | University Communications | March 2023