![]() ![]() All the same, those components of the memory each have specific addresses in a vast network of our billions of neurons. The “facts”, sometimes called episodic memory, are filed in one place, feelings in another (generally in a brain region called the amygdala). Ramirez points out that, while Eternal Sunshine implies that all these features of a memory are bundled up and stored in specific neurons in a single location in the brain, in fact it’s now clear that different aspects are stored in different locations. Your memories are a mixed bag: facts, feelings, sights, smells. ![]() What exactly do we remember? Recall isn’t total you might retain the key aspects of a significant event but not what day of the week it was, what you were wearing, or exactly what was said. Look up the phone number of a plumber and you’ll probably have forgotten it by tomorrow, but may remember the number of your childhood family home. Some information is stored long term, such as facts and events we experience repeatedly or which have an emotional association other items quickly vanish. ![]() While short-term memory is associated with the hippocampus, long-term memory is more spread throughout the cortex. It’s reasonable to compare short-term memory with a computer’s ephemeral working memory or RAM, and long-term memory with the hard drive that holds information more durably. Yet he remembered events and facts learnt long ago and could be taught new ones, indicating long-term memory is stored somewhere else. Molaison’s surgery removed a part of his brain called the hippocampus, giving a clue that this region is involved in short-term memory. Each day his carers had to introduce themselves to him anew. Christopher Nolan’s film Memento echoes the case of Henry Molaison, who, after a brain operation for epilepsy in the 1950s, lost the ability to record short-term memories. As the memories fade, the person seems to fade with them. Few things are more devastating to the individual and those close to them than the loss of these everyday facts. You know your language, name, loved ones. You see a tree, recognise it as a tree, know it is called “tree” and that it is a plant that grows. Your whole being depends on memory in ways you probably take for granted. We’re living in a time where it’s possible to pluck questions from the tree of science fiction and ground them in experimental reality.” So be careful what you wish for. “I even see a world where editing memories is something of a reality. “I see a world where we can reactivate any kind of memory we like, or erase unwanted memories,” says neuroscientist Steve Ramirez of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They are showing that memory is not like an old celluloid film, fixed but fading it is constantly being changed and updated, and can be edited and falsified with alarming ease. They have been able to implant false memories in flies and mice, so that innocuous environments or smells seem to be “remembered” as threatening. Researchers and clinicians are using drugs to suppress the emotional impact of traumatic memories. ![]()
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