That Neuroscience Guy - Neuroscience Bites - Assembling Memories

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

In today's Neuroscience Bite, we discuss how our brain recreates memories when we need them. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to another Neuroscience Byte. So this is just one leftover email that came in for the neuroscience myths, and it was asking about memory. And I wanted to do this one separately, even though it's just a bite. And the myth is that the way we store memories is it's like a computer file that's in your brain, right? Somewhere in your brain is your memory of

what you did last night or your memory of mathematics or your memory of mathematics, or your memory of how to play tennis. And that's not the way memories work whatsoever. Your memories are distributed across the brain. So your concept of time with the memory is in one part of the brain. Your concept of the visual space is another part of the brain. The part associated with sounds and smells are in a different part of the brain. The motor stuff is in a different part of the brain. The motor stuff is in a different part of the brain yet again. So when we actually remember something, we're not recalling the whole memory. And what you're actually doing is assembling the memory. And

that's a word that was used, which I think is better. So you don't actually remember things, you assemble memories and your brain is just pulling all those pieces together. And when you have trouble remembering something, it's not because it's just hidden in the brain and you can't access it. It's actually a failure to assemble. Your brain isn't able to piece it back together quite the way that it actually happened. And this is also where false memories come from. There's this cool line of research that suggests that upwards of 50% of what we remember never happened or didn't happen the way we remember it. And that's because when the memory gets

reassembled, all right, so it's not recalled or remembered, but the memory gets reassembled or assembled, you're just putting it together incorrectly. You're borrowing bits and pieces from different parts of your past. It might just be something you saw on television. You're pulling it together and your brain goes, well, hey, that's a memory. But half the time, you're wrong. Anyway, there's a little bite on assembling memories. Remember, there's Patreon, Etsy, all through thatneuroscienceguy.com. There is Reaching Out with Ideas. So on X, it's at thatneuroscienceguy or thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com.

And last but not least, as ever, thank you for listening to the podcast and subscribing. My name is Olaf Kregolsen, and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll see you soon for another full episode of the podcast.