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memory

Videos

  • Do Lab Rats Dream of Running Mazes?

    Neuroscientists Matthew Wilson gives the audience a rare look at the activity in a rat’s brain while it runs a maze. Using that data, he then set the rat through the maze again,...

  • The Unbearable Lightness of Memory

    Full 90 Minute Program: It’s the thought of your childhood home. It’s that comforting aroma you can still smell ten years later. It’s the way you define yourself. It’s...

  • The Making of a Spotless Mind

    How close are we to the selective memory engineering depicted in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Perhaps closer than you think. Neuroscientist Todd Sacktor demonstrates a...

  • What Is Memory?

    Just what is memory anyway? How much of it is conscious, and how much of it is subconscious? Find out in this short, animated primer on the different types of memory.

  • The Fallibility of 9/11 Memories

    How confident are you in your memories? After a dramatic, emotionally charged event such as the 9/11 terrorist attack, people describe their memories of the event as being...

  • The Fiction in Our Identity

    Have you ever remembered something so clearly that you were 100% positive in its retelling, only to second-guess yourself as soon as a contradiction surfaces? This...

  • How Good Is Your Memory?

    One of the fascinating things about people who have had a misattribution memory is the confidence in which they will defend their recollection. Building upon his anecdote about...

  • Persistence of Memory

    Our memories are the aggregate of our life experiences. They shape who we are in a big way. Giulio Tononi, an award-winning psychiatrist and neuroscientist, has made this study...

Blog Posts

  • The Unbearable Lightness of Memory

    This week we explored our tenuous relationship with our own memories. We learned how powerful they could be, as well as how they can lead us astray.

  • How the Brain Remembers 9/11

    Memories of tragic public events have been of interest to researchers for years. Dubbed as "flashbulb memories" for their extraordinary vividness of detail and photographic recall, these emotionally charged memories are described as being “burned” into one’s mind. But...

  • A Folly of Confidence

    Yesterday we saw just how easily one can hone their memory with simple techniques. Conversely, it's just as easy for our memories to fail us.

  • Seeking Shelter within Memory Palaces

    Memory is in the news lately. A new study, elegantly crafted by psychologist Betsy Sparrow, provides the most convincing evidence yet of the so-called "Google Brain": the notion that our minds have become so reliant on ever-present caches of information at our fingertips that...

  • Instant Reaction: Rhythms on the Brain

    One of life's eternal questions was addressed at the Eyebeam Center for Technology, one that each of us has been pondering since birth: What makes The Beatles The Beatles? The World Science Festival brought four music-lovers onstage—a neural scientist, a producer, and two...

  • A Memory for Pain, Stored in the Spine

    You slam your hand in a door, and the experience becomes etched into your brain. You carry a memory of the swinging panel, the sound as it crushes your flesh and the shooting pain as your skin gives way. Your body remembers it too. For days afterwards, the neurons in your spine...

  • Memories Are Made of This

    U.S. Patent 7,928,070 issued in April of this year for what was simply labeled as a “memory-enhancing protein.” Todd Sacktor, a professor at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, and a panelist at the 2011 World Science Festival’s The Unbearable Lightness of Memory, received the...

  • The Biological Mechanism That Gives Life Meaning

    As the title of our program The Unbearable Lightness of Memory suggests, memory is much more than the process by which we recall errands or birthdays. Memory—how information obtained from experience is stored in the brain—is also the mechanism that molds our sense of the...

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