memories
Why do some scents trigger powerful memories?
Anecdotally, many of us have had experiences where a certain smell—perhaps chlorine, fresh baked cookies, or the salty beach air—floods ...
People with PTSD may have trouble suppressing memories—good and bad
One question the researchers want to explore through the lens of the [November 13, 2015] Paris attacks is why some ...
Brain’s ‘ready-to-encode’ mode helps us create memories
What happens in the hippocampus even before people attempt to form memories may impact whether they remember. A new study ...
Infographic: How our brains keep track of time
It’s unclear how the brain keeps track of the timing of events within a memory. One theory posits that, as ...
‘The Idea of the Brain’: Pinpointing the storage location for our memories
For centuries, scientists have been arguing about where memory resides in the brain. I explore the fascinating history of this ...
Overcoming fear: Understanding DNA ‘flexibility’ could lead to better treatments for phobias and PTSD
Fear is an important survival mechanism and so too is the ability to inhibit fear when it’s no longer needed ...
While you sleep, your brain decides which memories to keep, and which ones go to ‘the garbage bin’
We don’t remember every detail of our lives: Our brains decide which events are important for long-term storage and which ...
What’s real? Why ‘false memories’ are trouble for police, juries and judges
In 2015, memory researcher and psychologist Julia Shaw and her co-author published a study on false memories. Over the course ...
Something you want to forget? CRISPR could be used to ‘delete’ traumatic memories
Good memories give us a sensation of warmth and hope for better times, but bad memories can cause serious trauma ...
Explaining déjà vu: Is this eerily familiar ‘glitch in the matrix’ a form of conflict resolution?
Some think déjà vu is a sign that you're recalling an experience from a past life. Spooky! Carrie-Anne Moss, as ...
Explaining consciousness: These 2 brain networks show how we turn experiences into memories
One of the most recent studies showed a clear relationship between two brain networks critical to consciousness. In a paper ...
Age isn’t the thing that saps our memories: ‘Experiencing new things is the best way to keep the mind young’
Twenty-year-olds don’t think, “Oh dear, this must be early-onset Alzheimer’s.” They think, “I’ve got a lot on my plate right ...
Are we getting closer to understanding how our brains make memories?
How do memories work? That has been a burning question for over a century, since Richard Semon introduced the term ...
Podcast: Researchers implanted false memories in birds to figure out how humans learn language
Babies are constantly surrounded by human language, always listening and processing. Eventually they put sounds together to produce a "daddy," or a ...
‘Peculiar brain waves’ during sleep may be key to forming memories, study suggests
Neuroscientists have always presumed that learning and memory depend on strengthening or weakening the connection points between neurons (synapses), increasing ...
Why you may have invented your earliest childhood memories
Around four out of every 10 of us have fabricated our first memory, according to researchers. This is thought to be ...
How the brain maps out ideas and memories
As the philosopher Immanuel Kant put it, the concept of space serves as the organizing principle by which we perceive ...
Augmented memory: This researcher wants to record every minute of his life
If we are nothing more than the sum of our memories and our experiences, how much of ourselves do we ...
Understanding the brain’s record-keeping system
The brain has a temporary way to keep track of memories ...
Why the ‘distorted memories’ of people with dementia are so important
As those with dementia lose their sense of reality, it can be helpful to validate their stories as they tell ...