How Your Memory Works

↓↓↓ More info and sources below ↓↓↓

How does memory work? And how does… un-memory work? Our brain does a lot of remembering and forgetting every day, so you should probably make room for som info on how it works. You’ll also get to meet some people who can’t make memories, and also never forget anything.

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It’s Okay To Be Smart is hosted by Joe Hanson, Ph.D.
Director: Joe Nicolosi
Writer: Maria Ter-Mikaelian
Creative Director: David Schulte
Editor/animator: Karl Boettcher and Derek Borsheim
Producers: Stephanie Noone and Amanda Fox

Produced by PBS Digital Studios
Music via APM

[besmart]

Don't forget to remember… to subscribe and share!
Leave us a comment and let us know what you thought of this week's video! Got any cool science questions we should check out next?

[repmel]

Passive Oblivesence. There! I didn't forget it! Take that Joe!

[snow.flower]

My boyfriend had a teacher in high school who never forgot anything. You can literally give her an exact date and she will tell you exactly what she did that day, to the tee. She remembers all of her students name, even from the very beginning of her teaching days. She also once started crying randomly during class because she can't forget about her daughter's death. It's a gift and a curse :(

i wrote this before the video talked about it omg

[MagicMaster]

Yeah, man. Memory is cool.
When I explain it to people I explain it like 'a path in the forest', you walk along it multiple times and it becomes wider and more clear.
Some of those memory-lanes in the brain are the width of high-lanes, since they've been in such constant use.
But if you walk along a path once in that forest, and "forget about it", the path that leads to the thought you thought is gone. It fades away, passively.
A great way for something to be easily remembered is thinking about it over, and over, and over again. More times than you'd think neccesary.
Also, Déja vù fits in somewhere in there.
- Stay Curious.

[tonycoronado]

"You'll probably forget Passive Oblivescence"
Me, a neuroscience major student: you're probably right

[stefan]

If we forget embarrassing moments, we would do them again

[okboing]

My deepest, darkest fear, short of drowning or suffocating, is forgetting. I already have poor short-term memory, and I'm deeply upset by how much I don't remember from early childhood. In one way, I hold childhood memories close to my heart, but at the same time, it hurts to stop remembering them and step back into stressful reality.

[jacksonayres]

As somebody with a CS degree, the way memories work strongly reminds me of the way index tables function for RAM, databases, and hard storage. Rather than actually contain the data, it contains the *location* of that data.

[RaindropsBleeding]

"How would it be if you never forgot anything?"
I know a friend like this and hers is a horror story. Sexually and physically abused as a child, enduring domestic abuse as she got older, and leading several fire rescue teams into danger in her early 20s, sending one team to their death. And she remembers all of it. The poor girl has total memory recall. Most people see it when she explains to them how much of their house is still standing, or when she helps friends find things they've misplaced. But she also remembers the abuse, the trauma, and the horrors she saw in the fire, all in excruciating detail. And she can't forget any of it.
How she's still sane is beyond me. Forgetting things is important.

[bridge]

You and your team are a godsend, for lack of better words. Great video as always :))

[darklion]

From my knowledge, the brain has two indicators to know the importance of a memory
1. emotional value
2. usefulness

Emotional value is, for example, that time when you ran away from a bear. The memory is frightening and holds great importance, or that time you found some sweat food and felt happy, as such remembered it.
Usefulness is, for example, remembering how to make food because you have done it every day; repetition is the key.

If you want to forget something, you should detach the emotional value from it. Usually, the best way to do this is to accept it. Imagine a kid. You don't want him to play with a specific toy. If you play with the toy all the time, he will want it. If you try to avoid it entirely, he will also want it. But if you don't give any special treatment to the toy, he will act the same.

[slimkt]

I need to master motivated forgetting, man. Too many negative memories keep me up at night.

[christophergroom]

This guy seems like the popular smart kid from high school. Love him!

[josephnicolosi]

great video, only complaint is that it should have been titled 'fuhgeddaboudit!'

[katkaat]

I was looking at my grandma's HS yearbook from 1946, and I said one name outloud and she described him perfectly, without looking at the book. It's pretty amazing.

[lukejreid]

I have had over 40 treatments of ECT and I’ve lost heaps of memories, some bad, some good. I only realise it when my family fill in the blanks. It is very weird.

[Notgivenit]

I’ve undergone ECT, you don’t lose old memories, those all stay intact. You loose short term memory stuff. Like I never forgot old memories, but I have no memory of the two months I was undergoing treatment.

[Kanzu]

4:05 "We have at least three different ways of forgetting. The first is what happens when a memory fades over time, so called passive oblivescence, a term you will probably forget."
You just gotta love that humor.

[Billaxle]

"That painful embarrassing memory from high school."
*GEE, THANKS JOE! IMMA GO TAKE MY MEDS NOW!*

[kalinapto]

I'm bipolar and three years ago, while being hospitalised, I had 12 sessions of electroconvulsive therapy. It took six weeks. Normally I have amazing memory, so partial memory loss was very weird for me. I lost most of memories from couple of months before hospital and for these six weeks I almost had no short-term memory at all! Friends took me to the movies couple of times but then even seing posters of these movies didn't ring a bell for me. These memories didn't come back, because twice a week I forgot last couple of days. I know it sounds scary, but after therapy remembering went back to normal and conjoined with proper medicines I felt a lot better. Stay curious! ;)