Why do we remember some life moments - but not others?

Summary

Why Do We Remember Some Life Moments—but Not Others? Some memories are easy to recall—lush with detail, fresh as the moment itself. Others are more tenuous, like faded sketches. And the most stubborn ones can refuse to resurface at all. Why do our brains enshrine some memories so indelibly, and let others slip away? A new Boston University study has a potential answer, suggesting that memories of mundane moments are given extra sticking power if they become connected to a significant event—something surprising, rewarding, or carrying an emotional punch. Watch your Powerball numbers cash in, for example, and you’re likely to remember what you were doing in the moments before, however unremarkable and unmemorable those incidents might have been otherwise. The findings, published in Science Advances, could potentially lead to improved treatments for people with memory problems or even help students retain tricky concepts. “Memory isn’t just a passive recording device: our brains decide what matters, and emotional events can reach back in time to stabilize fragile memories,” says Robert M.G. Reinhart, a BU College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of psychological and brain sciences. “Developing strategies to strengthen useful memories, or weaken harmful ones, is a long-standing goal in cognitive neuroscience. Our study suggests that emotional salience could be harnessed in precise ways to achieve those goals.” In their paper, he and his colleagues give the example of someone hiking through Yellowstone National Park and stumbling across a herd of majestic bison. The wow of that moment, they discovered, would not just cement the one magical experience in the mind, but lots of little, more run-of-the-mill events leading up to and away from it: a rock spotted on the path, a small animal darting into the undergrowth. “The question is: What are the mechanisms for that?” says Reinhart, who’s also a College of Engineering associate professor of biomedical engineering and ...