The Neuroscience of Memory

The Guardian Online has a great article today using Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as a jumping-off point for looking at both historical and current science of memory. Some recent studies have disputed the long-held assumption that memories can be "fixed" biochemically.

Four years ago, Karim Nader and his colleagues in New York showed that if an animal was taught a particular task, and then days later was reminded of it by being put in the same context, the memory became labile once more - that means it could be disrupted by protein synthesis inhibitors. It was as if the reminder not only reactivated the old memory, but resulted in an entirely new memory being formed on top of it. Of course, we can intuitively recognise this; when we recall a past event, we are not recalling the event per se, but our memory of it from the last time we recalled it. This is why our autobiographical memories are being reshaped as we go through life.

The article also fact-checks the science in films that use memory as a fictional device, from Hitchcock's Spellbound to Finding Nemo. You've got to love lines like, "Anterograde amnesia is not that sexy."