The Art of Manliness - Why Your Memory Seems Bad (It’s Not Just Age)

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.680 Do you sometimes walk into another room in your house to get something, but then can't

00:00:15.520 remember what it was you wanted?

00:00:17.100 Do you sometimes forget about an appointment or struggle to remember someone's name?

00:00:21.080 You may have chalked these lapses in memory up to getting older, and age can indeed play

00:00:25.000 a role in the diminishing power of memory.

00:00:26.780 But as my guest will tell us, there are other factors at play as well.

00:00:30.960 Charn Raghunath is a neuroscientist, psychologist, and the author of Why We Remember, Unlocking

00:00:36.400 Memory's Power to Hold On to What Matters.

00:00:38.960 Today on the show, Charn explains how factors like how we direct our attention, take photos,

00:00:43.400 and move through something called event boundaries all affect our memory, and how our current

00:00:47.560 context in life impacts which memories we're able to recall from the past.

00:00:51.680 We also talk about how to reverse engineer these factors to improve your memory.

00:00:54.600 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash memory.

00:01:10.220 Charn Raghunath, welcome to the show.

00:01:12.220 Thank you very much, Brett.

00:01:13.360 Great to be here.

00:01:14.220 So you are a neuroscientist, and you've spent your career 20-plus years researching memory.

00:01:20.440 And we're going to talk today about why we remember some things, why we forget other stuff, and

00:01:25.380 what we can do to improve our memory.

00:01:27.260 But after I read your book, one of the big takeaways I got from it was that memory is more

00:01:32.280 than just an archive of our past, that actually memory shapes our day-to-day lives.

00:01:38.940 So how does memory influence our lives beyond just being able to recall events?

00:01:43.200 So one just very kind of simple example would be, let's say you wake up in a hotel room, right?

00:01:51.220 Your first question as you wake up is you're a little disoriented, and probably without even

00:01:57.300 thinking about it, you're having this moment of, where am I?

00:02:01.300 And just to situate yourself in time and space, right?

00:02:04.580 It's like you can look around, you know where you are in the room, but where is this room?

00:02:07.760 It could be in like a prison somewhere, or it could be in like a resort.

00:02:12.480 Who knows?

00:02:13.560 And so you have to rely on memory just to get to that point to dig you out of that hole

00:02:18.300 and tell you exactly where you are.

00:02:20.560 So let's take a slightly more complex example now.

00:02:25.440 Let's say, for instance, you are trying to choose which restaurant you want to go to,

00:02:30.420 and you have a usual restaurant that's pretty good, but then lately they changed the menu.

00:02:35.640 And the last time you went there, you had a terrible meal.

00:02:37.940 So you can use memory to basically say, you know what, I'm going to go to someplace different

00:02:43.240 this time.

00:02:44.200 And then we can take something like a big choice.

00:02:46.740 So I decided to go into research in cognitive neuroscience, but my training was in clinical

00:02:52.100 psychology.

00:02:53.300 And I actually had the chance to do a clinical internship in which I could have been on a

00:02:59.580 career path to make lots of money in a clinical career.

00:03:02.420 And when I look back on that decision, what I asked myself was essentially, what are the

00:03:09.720 kinds of moments that I feel most comfortable in, that I'm happiest about?

00:03:15.100 When I thought about the instances in which I was in the clinic, I thought, okay, I have

00:03:19.660 to be dressed up well.

00:03:20.900 I have to be there early in the morning.

00:03:22.860 I have to be on when people say there's a lot of pressure because if I don't get things

00:03:27.120 bad things can happen versus the times that I could remember from being in research where

00:03:33.380 I was staying up late, drinking beers and eating pizza in the lab while we were working

00:03:38.800 late for a conference or something like that.

00:03:41.000 And the people that I hung out with in the lab versus the more kind of formal environment

00:03:46.420 in the clinic.

00:03:47.160 And it was just a no-brainer.

00:03:49.000 And so these hard life decisions are very, very complicated.

00:03:53.680 We're making them based on insufficient information.

00:03:55.860 And so we rely on memory to give us that data that we need to make these decisions about

00:04:00.800 our future.

00:04:02.280 And as we'll see in this conversation too, memory is connected to a lot of other things

00:04:05.900 in our lives that we might not think are connected to memory.

00:04:08.540 The ability to imagine things, that's connected to memory.

00:04:12.020 How we situate ourselves not only in place, like that example you gave, you wake up in a

00:04:16.540 hotel room, you're like, where the heck am I?

00:04:18.140 But also in time.

00:04:19.540 But let's get to this question.

00:04:20.440 I think a lot of people might have this.

00:04:22.140 Why do we remember some things but not others?

00:04:25.080 And then the follow-up question is, what can that answer tell us about how memory works?

00:04:31.880 When we look at the design of the brain, what you see over and over and over again, whatever

00:04:36.640 system you look at, is that the brain is optimizing to make the most of a little bit

00:04:42.500 of information.

00:04:43.980 And so what I mean by that is if we see the world, we're not literally looking at everything.

00:04:48.420 We're only grabbing little bits and pieces of the world with our eyes by just moving our

00:04:52.720 eyes and focusing in different places and then assembling that into a meaningful picture.

00:04:57.100 So we know that even our ability to perceive the world is limited and our ability to hold

00:05:02.960 things in attention is limited.

00:05:04.940 So what makes things memorable and what makes things grab our attention, there's a high relationship

00:05:11.460 between them.

00:05:12.440 They're often things that are biologically important.

00:05:15.320 So something that you'll probably find this, I imagine yourself, Brett, if you look back on

00:05:20.040 things in your life, you probably remember the first things that will come to mind will be

00:05:24.420 the highs and lows, right?

00:05:25.880 Things that are very emotionally, you know, they're exciting or times where you were scared

00:05:30.540 or times where you felt intense desire.

00:05:33.540 And these are biologically important moments where there are chemicals in the brain that

00:05:37.280 promote plasticity that are released during these moments.

00:05:40.460 So that right off the bat tells you something about why some events are memorable is because

00:05:45.160 they're biologically important.

00:05:47.760 Other events that would be also important would be things that are new or things that are

00:05:52.760 surprising.

00:05:53.240 So we often remember these events that really surprise us because they stick out.

00:05:59.800 And some of that is related to a phenomenon I'll get into with regards to interference.

00:06:05.800 But some of it is also when we're surprised or when we're in a brand new place that we've

00:06:09.720 never been to before.

00:06:11.180 Again, there's these release of neuromodulators, these chemicals in our brain that promote

00:06:15.800 plasticity.

00:06:17.020 So those are some of the key factors.

00:06:19.300 And another key factor, as I mentioned, is the fact that memories compete with each other.

00:06:24.260 And this is a phenomenon called interference.

00:06:26.180 So I think intuitively we might think of memory as being like I store a bunch of files in my

00:06:31.080 hard disk.

00:06:31.680 And more or less, if I store 10 files or if I store 20 files, it doesn't make a difference.

00:06:37.440 But that's not how memory works.

00:06:39.100 In human memory, the memories are competing with each other.

00:06:43.020 And so if I'm trying to remember Brett, let's say, your name, I meet you sometime in person.

00:06:49.580 We go into the real world as opposed to the virtual world.

00:06:51.920 I meet you.

00:06:52.720 We have a beer or something like that.

00:06:54.700 Then later on, I meet someone named Britt.

00:06:57.620 Well, remembering Britt is going to be complicated because I've just learned about Brett.

00:07:01.900 And there's going to be this interference between them.

00:07:05.000 So the way that memories can survive that competition is if there's something distinctive

00:07:09.480 that makes this memory different from something else.

00:07:12.320 So if I had something about your name and I could tie it with something interesting about

00:07:18.360 you that I learned and make that all into one big story, for instance, then now all of

00:07:23.020 a sudden you're very, very different from Britt because Britt's just sound that I heard.

00:07:27.520 And this is the way in which memories can stick around is if we're attending to something

00:07:34.340 that allows us to capture what's unique about this moment in time.

00:07:38.760 So the sights, the sounds, the smells, emotions, something that you think about that's unique.

00:07:46.000 Does our brain store memories in a specific part of the brain?

00:07:50.720 Well, this is a very tough question to answer because essentially it comes down to what is

00:07:55.540 the memory.

00:07:56.260 And so there's many different ways memory can be manifest.

00:08:00.380 One is your ability to just know, call upon facts, general knowledge that you have about

00:08:06.020 the world.

00:08:06.440 And that's called semantic memory.

00:08:08.340 And then there's your ability to remember specific events in your life, like episodic memory.

00:08:13.420 So I know that Def Leppard was a British metal band that played very melodic songs in the 1980s,

00:08:20.720 but that's different than my memory for seeing them in the round during the Hysteria tour,

00:08:25.180 which was a little bit after they had peaked.

00:08:27.240 But nonetheless, that's an episodic memory from one point in time.

00:08:31.820 And so those kinds of memories differ from each other.

00:08:34.980 Now, the hippocampus is an area of the brain that's known to be very important for forming

00:08:39.160 new episodic memories.

00:08:40.820 And it doesn't do it by itself, but what it does is it ties together all of these different

00:08:46.720 parts of the brain that are processing the different kinds of aspects of the semantics

00:08:51.220 of your world.

00:08:52.400 Does that make sense?

00:08:53.440 Am I kind of getting too...

00:08:54.480 No, that's making sense so far, yeah.

00:08:57.380 Yeah.

00:08:57.920 So a lot of what people think of when they think of the memory loss, for instance, that

00:09:03.000 you see in the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease, that's related in part to the loss

00:09:07.680 of the hippocampus.

00:09:08.780 Because what happens is people start to lose this ability to form new episodic memories.

00:09:13.700 They still have knowledge of who they are, all the people they know in those early stages,

00:09:18.080 but they lose this ability to form new episodic memories.

00:09:22.520 And so that's why the hippocampus is such a big player in memories, because it plays this

00:09:26.920 role in just arbitrarily saying, in some ways, the hippocampus, I mean, if we were to pretend

00:09:32.800 the hippocampus is a person instead of a brain area, you could say, well, it's being deliberately 0.98

00:09:37.020 dumb. 0.86

00:09:37.680 It's not thinking about why things should go together. 0.98

00:09:40.980 It's just saying, hey, I happened to see Brett in the pub while the song was playing in

00:09:47.480 the background all at the same moment in time.

00:09:50.540 And that's what the memory is.

00:09:51.940 It's just this random coincidence of factors.

00:09:55.360 Okay.

00:09:55.420 So the hippocampus is involved in episodic memories.

00:09:59.140 Something that you've researched a lot and found, and it's been groundbreaking, is the

00:10:02.900 role the prefrontal cortex plays in memory.

00:10:06.820 People might be familiar with the idea that the prefrontal cortex can be used as short-term

00:10:11.300 memory.

00:10:11.660 The analogy is the prefrontal cortex is like RAM.

00:10:15.180 It's like working memory.

00:10:16.020 So if you need to temporarily remember something, prefrontal cortex can take that, but for longer

00:10:21.100 term memories, it goes to the hippocampus.

00:10:23.360 What your research has found is no, the prefrontal cortex actually plays a bigger role in those

00:10:27.920 long-term memories.

00:10:29.060 What role does the prefrontal cortex play?

00:10:32.040 Yeah, I think that I'm really glad you brought up that RAM analogy because I think that was

00:10:36.640 very popular for a long time in psychology that we used to think of humans as being like

00:10:41.520 computers in this very kind of straightforward way, but we're not.

00:10:44.820 What the prefrontal cortex seems to be about is, it's kind of a, again, I'm going to use

00:10:51.780 these analogies just to keep things simple, although I hope people with a more scientific

00:10:56.060 background won't get mad at me for this.

00:10:58.320 But a lot of people use the term executive to describe what the prefrontal cortex does.

00:11:03.920 And what that means is, you know, an executive who's running a company really has no useful

00:11:09.860 skills, right?

00:11:10.860 They're not like, you're not going to trust them with the accounting, you're not going

00:11:14.080 to trust them to like handle the mailroom or anything like that.

00:11:17.760 But their job is really to oversee everything coordinated towards a common goal.

00:11:23.160 And that's what the prefrontal cortex is all about.

00:11:25.140 So for a long time, people used to think, oh, the prefrontal cortex doesn't do anything

00:11:29.780 because it's not, people could lose a prefrontal cortex and they would still walk and talk and

00:11:35.620 have all the knowledge they did before.

00:11:37.760 But they couldn't function in the real world because they had no ability to use that information

00:11:43.420 to get their goals achieved.

00:11:45.660 And so you brought up this idea of short-term memory.

00:11:49.000 And so part of the idea of being able to hold a phone number, say, in short-term memory,

00:11:54.080 like if I give you a phone number or if I say, hey, here's your temporary password, I need

00:11:58.240 you to reset it so that you can get back into your bank account.

00:12:01.760 You're keeping that information in mind.

00:12:03.920 But to do that, you have to keep out, keep yourself from being distracted, right?

00:12:08.340 So there's a kid crying in the background, or maybe you're getting a text alert on your phone

00:12:13.940 and you have to suppress those distractions to focus on what's relevant.

00:12:18.260 And that's where the prefrontal cortex comes in.

00:12:21.560 But that same ability is also what allows you to be present in the moment and focus on what's

00:12:28.940 important, like where I put my keys or where I put my phone, as opposed to the things that may

00:12:34.720 be less important but could grab your attention, like the sound of a dog barking or a kettle

00:12:39.980 whistling or something, things that you need to take care of.

00:12:42.160 But they're not necessarily related to these other long-term goals.

00:12:46.380 And so this idea that the prefrontal cortex directs our attention to stuff that we want

00:12:51.620 to remember, and if we're distracted, we might not remember that thing, that explains like

00:12:56.500 why we forget, like where did I put my keys, where did I put my wallet?

00:12:59.760 Because you just, you weren't, your prefrontal cortex kind of checked out when you just dropped

00:13:03.060 them on the counter and you weren't paying attention.

00:13:05.060 So it's just like, yeah, we're not going to remember that.

00:13:08.440 That's exactly right.

00:13:09.660 Yeah.

00:13:10.120 Yeah.

00:13:10.340 That's exactly right.

00:13:11.660 And so, and sometimes what happens is our prefrontal cortex isn't checking out, but it's actually,

00:13:16.960 sometimes we intentionally do it.

00:13:18.560 We switch from one task to another.

00:13:20.800 We'll go, oh, yeah, I'm going to be like, you know, I'm walking in the door, I've got

00:13:25.620 my keys.

00:13:26.580 But then I just decide habitually to check my email or something.

00:13:30.260 And so the prefrontal cortex is saying, okay, let's shift gears.

00:13:33.200 Now my goal is to check email.

00:13:35.920 And so the next time when you go back to your keys, you're already a step behind because

00:13:41.440 your prefrontal cortex has to use all these resources just to shift back from the email

00:13:46.580 task back to whatever it was you were doing when you opened the door.

00:13:50.160 And so as a result, our resources become too depleted, spread too thin, and we can't focus

00:13:56.620 in on what we need.

00:13:57.380 So sometimes the prefrontal cortex is there, but we misdirect it because we have bad habits.

00:14:02.540 Right.

00:14:02.760 Or it could just be overwhelmed.

00:14:04.200 I think you highlighted some research how constantly using social media, that can inhibit

00:14:09.420 memory because your prefrontal cortex has got all this information, just you're blasting

00:14:14.440 it, and then it can't remember stuff you actually want to remember.

00:14:17.840 That's exactly right.

00:14:19.000 Yeah.

00:14:19.240 So you can be blasted both by switching between these things.

00:14:22.980 And again, a lot of this is under our control, so to speak, meaning that we don't have to

00:14:28.840 check social media all the time.

00:14:30.800 Like right now, if I was being sloppy, I would be checking social media in between points in

00:14:38.200 our conversation, which would be horrible for my ability to remember our conversation

00:14:42.680 later on, which is why I turned off all my alerts and I went into focus mode for this

00:14:47.140 conversation because otherwise I'd be having this conversation.

00:14:50.840 And then somebody would say, hey, what did you do today?

00:14:53.340 And I'd be like, I was on this amazing podcast, but I can't remember anything about it.

00:14:58.440 Yeah.

00:14:58.780 And this might explain like why as you get older, I mean, there's a couple of things

00:15:03.020 going on as you get older, why your memory feels like it's not as sharp.

00:15:06.280 But I just think as you get older into your 30s and your 40s and your 50s, you have a lot

00:15:09.400 more going on in your life, a lot more stuff to keep track of, keeping track of your kid's

00:15:13.720 schedule, your work schedule, things that need to be done on the house.

00:15:17.280 And so, yeah, you're probably going to forget that your glasses are on top of your

00:15:20.820 head because you got so much going on.

00:15:23.880 That's a very good point.

00:15:25.540 You know, so as we get older, there's a bunch of things that happen.

00:15:28.680 So one is that we have a lot of stresses, we have a lot of pressures, and we have a lot

00:15:32.740 of competing things and deadlines and so forth.

00:15:35.700 And so when we're under stress, the natural response of the brain is to downregulate the

00:15:42.220 prefrontal cortex.

00:15:43.220 You want to go into more of a responsive mode rather than a mode of planning and deliberation.

00:15:49.220 And so we're now compromised because of that stress.

00:15:53.820 But then on top of it, as we get older, on average, the prefrontal cortex shrinks a little

00:15:58.680 bit.

00:15:59.020 It's not functioning as efficiently as it should.

00:16:02.280 And then, you know, we're maybe having some health issues.

00:16:05.680 Maybe we just got over a bout of COVID.

00:16:08.160 Maybe you're not sleeping as well as you used to.

00:16:11.780 And so all of these factors can compromise the frontal cortex even more.

00:16:15.480 So one of the things I think a lot about is how modern life is just optimized to deplete

00:16:21.680 our mental resources and put us in the state of perpetual amnesia.

00:16:27.020 Okay, so the prefrontal cortex plays a role in memory by directing where we place our attention.

00:16:33.280 And then when we don't give something sufficient attention, we can't remember it.

00:16:37.300 So, you know, if we got a lot going on in our lives, we tend to be forgetful because there's

00:16:41.140 just too many things to pay attention to, it overwhelms the prefrontal cortex.

00:16:46.260 And then when you're multitasking, you know, task switching a lot, you can't give anyone

00:16:49.920 task enough attention to remember what's going on with it and do it well.

00:16:55.160 And then all these things, it can cause stress and that can deplete the strength of the prefrontal

00:16:59.200 cortex as well as other things like lack of sleep.

00:17:02.160 Something related to this is how the use of smartphone cameras affects how we remember

00:17:08.280 an experience.

00:17:09.480 What does the research say there?

00:17:11.160 So on average, the research shows pretty significantly that when we use cameras to document our lives,

00:17:18.360 we actually have a paradoxically lower memory for those events.

00:17:23.180 And I think people have this intuitive idea that if I take a picture of this event, I will

00:17:27.560 remember it.

00:17:28.740 And in theory, that could be true.

00:17:30.320 But what often happens is people don't go back to the pictures, right?

00:17:34.720 Because we collect gobs and gobs of pictures.

00:17:37.380 And then on top of it, we're mindlessly documenting these things.

00:17:41.800 And you can see this with the rise of Instagram walls everywhere, right?

00:17:44.860 So it becomes no longer about the experience, but about the picture.

00:17:48.640 And so what happens is, is that people tend to have a poor memory for these experiences when

00:17:54.720 they've been focused on taking the pictures and posting them.

00:17:57.280 Now, it doesn't have to be that way.

00:17:59.300 So you could be more selective in the way that you take pictures and use the camera as a tool

00:18:05.380 for grounding you in the moment and say, what's really going on here?

00:18:09.000 What's interesting here?

00:18:10.160 And then selectively take pictures that are planting cues in your mind for later on being

00:18:15.700 able to remember them.

00:18:16.680 Because that's what a lot of memory is, is if you have the right cues, some distinctive

00:18:22.860 thing that you're seeing or smelling or hearing, that's what allows you to go back and revisit

00:18:28.720 that moment.

00:18:29.600 And so we can be mindful about picture taking.

00:18:33.140 And one study found that if people are in that kind of condition, you can actually improve

00:18:39.060 memory.

00:18:40.160 Another way you can do it is by actually going back to those pictures.

00:18:43.480 So we can think of an Instagram story or a Snapchat post as being a metaphor for how

00:18:50.460 photos actually have this amnesic quality where you post something and then two days

00:18:55.340 it disappears.

00:18:56.280 And this is what I think we often do with our photos.

00:18:58.640 But if you actually, one of the things I do like is what's called Facebook memories,

00:19:02.720 where they put on a photo that you haven't seen in years, but you posted it a while back.

00:19:07.900 And that's now a cue to recall that memory.

00:19:11.320 And the act of recalling that memory now makes it more accessible later on.

00:19:15.520 So that way you can remember it again.

00:19:17.580 So the act of remembering makes it more memorable.

00:19:21.180 Okay.

00:19:21.200 So if you're going to take pictures, I think going back to what we were saying about the

00:19:24.300 role of the prefrontal cortex in memory, if you're just focused on taking the perfect

00:19:28.900 picture and thinking, oh, this would be great for Instagram.

00:19:30.980 And what are my friends going to think about?

00:19:32.580 You know, the way you're directing your attention, you know, putting it on the picture taking

00:19:36.340 itself.

00:19:36.920 I mean, you're not really present.

00:19:39.180 You're not there.

00:19:40.300 And because of that, you're not going to remember the experience as much.

00:19:43.680 But you could, if you direct your attention differently, even while taking a picture,

00:19:48.080 that can enhance your memory if you want it to.

00:19:51.420 Yes.

00:19:51.840 I would say that if you can use your prefrontal cortex, say, if my goal is to have a memorable

00:19:56.820 experience, I can actually, first of all, think about what's in front of me.

00:20:02.000 Think about the sights and the sounds and the smells and so forth and immerse myself

00:20:06.280 in it, immerse myself in this moment.

00:20:08.800 But then when I do take pictures, you can actually ask yourself, what would be a good

00:20:12.680 reminder of this moment?

00:20:14.500 What are the points in this moment that I want to remember?

00:20:17.100 What are the points in this moment that I don't want to document?

00:20:19.680 I think lots of times we just take pictures without ever even thinking, is this the memory

00:20:24.220 that I want to be calling back?

00:20:25.560 Because ultimately, once we start taking these pictures, those pictures will have a

00:20:31.580 disproportionate effect on what we remember.

00:20:34.480 So how many times have you taken a vacation and you take pictures and the events that

00:20:38.740 you remember later on are those events that you photographed and the ones that you didn't

00:20:42.880 photograph get thrown to the side.

00:20:44.500 Has this ever happened to you?

00:20:45.580 Yeah.

00:20:47.080 No, for sure.

00:20:47.540 So, yeah.

00:20:48.660 So that's, I think, part of it is the camera can be a tool.

00:20:52.920 And again, if you use your frontal cortex to say, what do I want out of this experience?

00:20:56.640 The camera can be a tool to get it, as opposed to a distraction that just takes you away from

00:21:02.300 what you want.

00:21:03.340 So going back to this idea of episodic memory, this is sort of remembering events in our lives

00:21:08.360 that happen to us.

00:21:09.740 Why is it that we have a harder time with episodic memory as we get older?

00:21:16.160 So I think we mentioned some things, right?

00:21:17.740 You have just a lot going on in your life.

00:21:19.520 There's stress.

00:21:20.820 Your prefrontal cortex shrinks as you get older.

00:21:22.780 But I mean, I've noticed this in my own life, and I think you talk about this in the book.

00:21:27.620 I can remember stuff from when I was middle school through age 30, like very vividly.

00:21:35.640 I remember college.

00:21:36.580 I remember traveling internationally.

00:21:38.760 I remember high school football.

00:21:40.960 But then after age 30-ish, things are kind of like, I kind of remember doing that, but

00:21:45.940 it's not as in much detail as those teenage years.

00:21:49.600 What's going on there?

00:21:50.600 Well, this is something that's very, very common.

00:21:53.900 In fact, memory researchers have a name for it, which is the reminiscence bump.

00:21:58.460 And the idea behind the reminiscence bump is that if you just plot the number of memories

00:22:03.600 that people will report, if you ask them about different times of their lives, and you just

00:22:07.720 make a little graph out of it, there's a big bump in the graph from the years between

00:22:11.300 the ages of 18 to 30.

00:22:13.140 And there's a number of reasons for that.

00:22:14.900 And one big reason is that that's when our sense of who we are is actually emerging.

00:22:20.980 And so the experiences that we have during that time period are very tied to our sense

00:22:26.140 of identity.

00:22:27.440 And that's the time when we're forming our tastes in music, in food, and we're finding

00:22:33.200 the friendships that help define us and so forth.

00:22:36.380 And so we tend to call upon those memories more as a result.

00:22:40.480 And as I was saying, the memories that you call upon the most will be strengthened each

00:22:45.440 time you call upon them.

00:22:46.800 Another theory as to why we remember more from our youth is that memory is enhanced when

00:22:53.160 we encounter something novel.

00:22:55.100 And when we're young, we've got a lot of novel things.

00:22:57.980 There's a lot of firsts.

00:22:59.700 We do a lot of new things.

00:23:01.300 And so when the brain encounters that, its memory camera is like, oh, hey, this is novel.

00:23:06.980 This might be important.

00:23:08.500 We're going to take a lot of footage of this.

00:23:10.340 So then when you look back on it, there's a lot of memory footage to unspool.

00:23:15.100 But as adults, we tend to get into a routine.

00:23:17.880 We experience less novelty.

00:23:19.800 Each day, even year, it's just a lot like the last one.

00:23:23.280 And so the memory camera just like turns off.

00:23:25.880 It's like, well, I've seen this before.

00:23:28.120 No need to capture it.

00:23:29.540 So when we look back, there's not a lot of memory footage to unspool.

00:23:33.180 So if you want more memories in adulthood, you're going to have to do more novel things,

00:23:37.600 more memorable things.

00:23:39.960 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:23:47.100 And now back to the show.

00:23:48.580 So how can understanding how episodic memory works help us understand why it is when we

00:23:55.400 go into the kitchen for something, we forget why we went into the kitchen?

00:24:00.500 What's going on there?

00:24:02.000 This is one of my favorite topics and actually something that we're studying a lot in my lab

00:24:06.920 right now.

00:24:07.980 Even though our lives are continuous, what happens is we tend to remember our lives as a series

00:24:14.600 of events, like I went to the kitchen, I went to someone's 21st birthday party, blah, blah, blah.

00:24:21.540 And so what we think happens is, is that as we go about our day, you're creating a little

00:24:27.940 story in your head that's, okay, so my job right now is to talk to Brett and answer this

00:24:32.780 question.

00:24:33.260 I'm keeping your question in mind.

00:24:34.980 I'm thinking of all these ways of answering it.

00:24:37.380 But then we move on to another question and I flush that information out.

00:24:41.940 I focus on the new question you're asking.

00:24:44.260 And that time when I pivot from question one to question two is what we would call an event

00:24:48.860 boundary.

00:24:49.700 It means that one event is over and another has begun.

00:24:53.060 And what we can see when we scan people's brains is at those moments, there's almost

00:24:57.140 a tectonic shift in the patterns of brain activity where you see this change in patterns

00:25:02.880 as people's story about the world changes in a moment.

00:25:06.560 And so what's interesting is, is that even the act of just moving from one room to another

00:25:11.560 can give you that.

00:25:12.540 So if I take a few steps right now, if I were just to stand up, take a few steps to my right,

00:25:17.620 I'd be in my room and then one more step and I'm crossing into the hallway.

00:25:21.780 And even though it's just another step, I would psychologically feel like I'm in a new place.

00:25:27.280 And that change in your spatial context is enough to create an event boundary.

00:25:32.780 And because context is so important for memory, that as episodic memories are so tied to a

00:25:38.680 time and a place, that in the time it takes me to go to the kitchen, now I've shifted across

00:25:44.060 two or three rooms.

00:25:45.900 And now when I go back and try to remember why I went to the kitchen, I have to engage

00:25:50.840 in this act of mental time travel to recall what I was doing back in that time period when

00:25:56.560 I was in my room.

00:25:58.260 And that's why it's often helpful if you go back to the room you were in originally, you'll

00:26:02.200 remember why you went to the kitchen.

00:26:04.800 That's right.

00:26:05.800 Yeah, that's right.

00:26:06.580 So then what happens is for me personally, I'll go to the kitchen, I'll say, oh, what was

00:26:11.100 I here for?

00:26:12.220 Then I'll just grab some food and eat it.

00:26:14.160 And then I come back to my office and I'm like, oh my God, I left my phone in there.

00:26:18.720 And I realized, okay, over the course of the past year, I've probably consumed thousands 0.97

00:26:23.220 of calories because of these damn event boundaries. 0.83

00:26:25.560 As I read about that idea about event boundaries, it made me wonder if this can help explain 0.97

00:26:32.040 whenever I read stuff on a digital device, like my smartphone with the Kindle app, I

00:26:36.980 don't remember as much as when I'm reading from a paperback book.

00:26:40.460 And I think it could be because when you're on a device, I could be on the Kindle app and

00:26:44.980 then immediately I can swipe over to Instagram or my email.

00:26:47.920 That event boundary, when I'm reading on my phone, it's just really porous.

00:26:51.800 I'm switching back and forth between events, so I'm remembering less about each.

00:26:57.420 But with a book, like a paperback book, there's a clear event boundary in its pages.

00:27:02.160 When I'm reading, I'm reading.

00:27:03.900 I'm just in the book.

00:27:05.220 It's just one event.

00:27:06.840 And I've noticed that whenever I read a paperback book, I remember it more.

00:27:11.180 I can find things and I can remember where some quote that I highlighted is.

00:27:15.160 I know which part of the book it's in, but I don't have that experience when I'm reading

00:27:19.040 on the Kindle app.

00:27:20.700 Yeah, so there's definitely physical aspects of holding a book that are different than

00:27:25.560 the way we interact with a Kindle, for instance.

00:27:28.440 And so that can lead our reading experience to change, which is going to change memorability.

00:27:34.680 So one of the things that you mentioned is just the fact that if you're using a device

00:27:39.100 that has more than just a reading app on it, it's just so tempting to think of other things.

00:27:44.340 So when you pick up that device, your brain is considering all the possible tasks you

00:27:50.380 could do on that device.

00:27:51.620 And so it's almost like you're at a buffet.

00:27:53.340 And I don't know about you, but if I ever go to a buffet, I'm eating one thing, but I'm

00:27:56.860 thinking about all the other things they could be eating, right?

00:27:59.820 So again, I'm never really there.

00:28:01.920 And with a book, on the other hand, you have no choice.

00:28:04.340 You're sort of stuck with it.

00:28:05.420 And also with a book, there's a way in which there's a spatial sense of where the plot is,

00:28:12.120 because essentially there's a physical place for each word on this book.

00:28:16.700 But on the screen, it's a little different because every page appears on the same screen.

00:28:21.400 So it gives you a little bit more distinctiveness.

00:28:24.640 And all these factors put together, I believe, make it easier.

00:28:28.960 I think you brought this up in your example.

00:28:30.920 If I'm reading page 100, I often have to think back to what happened in page 70 in order to

00:28:38.520 be able to understand what's happening in page 100.

00:28:42.240 And that's easier to do, I think.

00:28:44.480 At least it feels more natural with a physical book because it's on a different page.

00:28:48.800 So I can think about it in a way that actually takes me back to a different place in a different

00:28:53.680 time.

00:28:54.760 And what we've found is that actually there's a little burst of activity and a pattern of

00:28:59.860 activity in the hippocampus that tells us that people are mentally time traveling back

00:29:05.240 at these points where you can make a connection between the current part of a story and a

00:29:09.760 previous part of the story.

00:29:11.620 That's really interesting.

00:29:11.840 And so I think that act of being able to link things together and build them into a bigger

00:29:16.020 narrative is just mentally easier with a physical book.

00:29:20.780 Okay, so if you feel like your brain's kind of like, oh, I'm not remembering as much,

00:29:24.960 a few things we can do there.

00:29:26.540 Don't blast your prefrontal cortex as much.

00:29:29.280 Maybe turn off the fire hose of social media.

00:29:32.580 Don't task switch so much.

00:29:35.500 Take care of your prefrontal cortex.

00:29:37.120 Sleep, reduce stress, eat right.

00:29:39.020 That can help out a lot.

00:29:40.580 I thought it was really interesting.

00:29:41.200 You have this chapter about the role that imagination plays in memory.

00:29:46.400 What's the connection between the two?

00:29:47.700 So I loved writing this chapter.

00:29:50.580 It was just so much fun because it allowed me, one of the things about writing this book

00:29:55.080 that was so much fun is I got to take a beginner's mind and start to look at things that I'd seen

00:30:00.280 in different things that I had read and put it together in a new way.

00:30:04.500 And so there's a very old idea going back to a researcher named Bartlett in 1930, where

00:30:10.920 he argued that we don't replay the past, but we really create what he called an imaginative

00:30:17.100 construction.

00:30:17.840 And by that he means that we don't play the past, we actually imagine how the past could

00:30:23.300 have been.

00:30:24.240 It's like instead of replaying it, we stage a play in our mind of how it could have gone

00:30:28.180 on.

00:30:29.060 And so we do get some details, but then we use imagination to fill in the blanks and add meaning

00:30:35.260 to our past.

00:30:36.120 And likewise, he suggested this.

00:30:39.020 And then in neuroscience, this idea really took off about 15 years ago, that we actually

00:30:45.660 use memory to supplement imagination.

00:30:48.900 That is, when we imagine things, they're not coming out of thin air.

00:30:52.200 They're based on this combination of all these semantic knowledge that we have and then all

00:30:58.300 these little episodic memories, these random bits of experience that we've had at different

00:31:02.860 moments in our life that allow us to anticipate and imagine things that have never happened

00:31:08.220 before.

00:31:08.720 And it's sort of the root of creativity.

00:31:11.600 So this brings an interesting question.

00:31:13.440 If memory is us just imagining how things might have gone, how do we know if what we're

00:31:19.080 remembering actually happened, that we're not just imagining it?

00:31:23.200 This is one of the coolest things about science, when somebody comes up with a problem that

00:31:28.780 nobody had previously realized was a problem.

00:31:31.560 And so my old advisor, Marsha Johnson, just came out with this as a young researcher in

00:31:37.400 the 70s.

00:31:38.020 She just said, how do we tell the difference between imagination and things that we've

00:31:42.940 actually experienced?

00:31:43.640 Because it's all in our heads.

00:31:45.360 A memory for something that happened and a memory for something we just thought about

00:31:48.860 are both just mental experiences.

00:31:51.380 And so the way that we have to do it is, again, surprise, you have to use your prefrontal

00:31:57.240 cortex to do a little bit of extra detective work.

00:32:01.200 And so what that involves is saying, okay, when I remember this thing, what are the bits

00:32:05.760 and pieces that are coming to mind?

00:32:07.680 Are they things that I can see, or are they things that I can hear, or something that gives

00:32:14.220 me some grounding in that past event?

00:32:16.840 Or is it just stuff that I thought about?

00:32:18.760 So I don't know about you, but for me, I have these issues where I ask myself, did I send

00:32:26.000 that email, or did I just think about sending the email?

00:32:28.880 Did I take my medicine today, or did I just think about it and then get distracted?

00:32:33.180 And I have to actually ask myself, okay, can I feel myself pushing the send button?

00:32:38.320 Can I visualize myself, or can I taste like putting the medicine in my mouth and drinking

00:32:44.420 the water?

00:32:45.340 And if so, do I bring back a sense of today versus some other day?

00:32:49.520 And so those kinds of sensory experiences ground us in things that we've actually experienced

00:32:54.920 in the real world.

00:32:56.340 But the information that we think about could very easily be imagined.

00:33:00.320 And then also, whenever we're doing that imagining memory thing going on, like other stuff might

00:33:07.620 mix in as we're trying to recall a memory of our childhood.

00:33:11.160 There might be something that we picked up, like we read a book or something, and we saw

00:33:15.440 a movie, and we unintentionally spliced that into the childhood memory.

00:33:20.100 And it might turn into something that actually, that's not how it happened.

00:33:24.200 Yeah, and often, I mean, we need this because it's this less is more principle that we're

00:33:30.640 using schemas as the scaffold for our episodic memories.

00:33:34.720 So we don't have to keep rebuilding our memories from scratch.

00:33:37.680 If I went to a cafe every Monday and met up with a different friend, if I formed a blank

00:33:44.120 memory of that every time, I would be wasting enormous amounts of resources when instead I could

00:33:51.320 just take all my knowledge about what generally happens in cafes, and then tack on to that

00:33:56.460 the specific details of what I did this week versus what I did last week.

00:34:01.080 Now, the problem is, is that our schemas allow us to fill in those blanks, but sometimes we

00:34:06.100 fill them in incorrectly.

00:34:08.000 And then what's worse is when we recall those events and we fill in the blanks incorrectly,

00:34:12.540 now that new information can creep into our old memory because the memories get transformed

00:34:17.640 every time we recall them.

00:34:19.160 And so that's why often people's, when they tell the story of something that happened in

00:34:23.340 their childhood over and over and over again, or your parents probably do this, what happens

00:34:27.960 is that they get more and more of these little errors that start accumulating.

00:34:33.500 Does this idea explain why sometimes people confess to crimes they didn't commit?

00:34:40.160 Yes, because what you can typically do in these interrogation situations, and there's actually

00:34:46.260 manuals that there's a manual called the read manual that talks about an interrogation method,

00:34:52.340 which relies on this, where what they do is they ask a person to, so first of all, you

00:34:58.940 start off with somebody who's an authority figure, like a police person.

00:35:02.320 You put the defendant under stress, and then you give them some misinformation, like somebody

00:35:09.320 else has ratted you out.

00:35:10.620 We already know that you did this.

00:35:12.160 So now there's a little bit of a seed of doubt planted in the person's mind, and they're

00:35:16.960 stressed out, so they're not applying this kind of critical thinking that the prefrontal

00:35:20.440 cortex would normally let them do.

00:35:22.820 And then you ask them, okay, well, if you don't remember it, just imagine how it could

00:35:27.160 have played out.

00:35:28.420 And so now they think about it, and if they have a vivid imagination, they might actually

00:35:33.160 be able to come up with a very vivid mental picture of how the crime could have played

00:35:37.060 out.

00:35:37.360 And the next day you ask them, and now they remember something, but they don't remember

00:35:42.500 what happened.

00:35:43.620 They remember what they imagined.

00:35:45.720 And so if you do this across multiple days while a person is stressed out, sleep deprived,

00:35:50.640 in case of it's some interrogation of somebody abroad, like what the CIA does with their enhanced

00:35:55.640 interrogation tactics, maybe they're being tortured.

00:35:58.860 And so as a result of all this, people can develop quite a rich false memory for things that

00:36:03.180 never happened.

00:36:03.980 And this has been simulated in the lab by Julia Shaw and Elizabeth Loftus, and this has been

00:36:10.220 shown to happen in real life.

00:36:12.540 Okay, so memory can be squidgy because our imagination plays a role in recalling memory.

00:36:19.540 Here's another thing I've noticed in my life, and it goes to the squidginess of memory.

00:36:25.060 Sometimes you're talking to a friend, and you'd be talking about when you were in high school

00:36:29.640 or in college, and you say something like, oh, yeah, I remember you were really for the

00:36:34.120 war in Iraq, and I remember how adamant you were.

00:36:37.240 And the person, your friend says, actually, no, I wasn't.

00:36:41.240 I mean, I might have said some things, but I actually wasn't.

00:36:43.400 You're like, no, you seem pretty adamant about that at the time.

00:36:47.660 Do we sometimes change our memories in order to match how we see ourselves today?

00:36:51.980 So maybe we thought something in the past, but then our politics has changed or beliefs

00:36:55.420 have changed, but we update the way we remember things so that it matches how we think of

00:37:01.080 ourselves today.

00:37:01.600 Does that make sense what I'm asking?

00:37:03.620 Absolutely.

00:37:04.440 And the answer is yes.

00:37:06.220 So our ability to recall anything in a given moment is based on who we are and how we feel

00:37:13.280 in our mental context at a given moment.

00:37:15.280 So just as if you hear the right song or if you're in the right place, you can access a

00:37:20.900 memory for a particular moment that matched up with that.

00:37:23.840 It can kind of send you back in time.

00:37:26.460 Likewise, when we're searching for information, the goals that we have and the beliefs that

00:37:31.340 we carry with us affect what we can pull out and what we can't.

00:37:34.720 So it can be something like more unconscious.

00:37:38.640 So for instance, it could be something along the lines of you're having a fight with your

00:37:42.000 partner.

00:37:42.520 And so now all of a sudden you pull up all these things recently that they did to piss

00:37:46.800 you off. 0.71

00:37:47.320 And it's just so easy to come up with them.

00:37:49.640 Then you make up and then a week later, you can't remember what you even fought about.

00:37:53.440 All those other memories that popped up, right?

00:37:57.160 And so what changed was your mental context, this emotion, this intense emotion that you

00:38:01.580 felt.

00:38:02.460 And this also works for beliefs too.

00:38:04.880 So we have certain beliefs and we tend to find memories that are consistent with our

00:38:10.280 beliefs.

00:38:10.740 If my belief is the past used to be great and I was so cool when I was in high school, then

00:38:18.280 I'll remember all these great things that happened in high school, but I won't remember all the

00:38:22.280 negative things that happened in high school.

00:38:24.660 And then finally, we view the world through a particular perspective.

00:38:28.020 And so we can actually access other information when we change this perspective.

00:38:32.760 So for instance, two people who are members of different political parties might watch the same

00:38:37.400 presidential debate and come away with memories of completely different experiences of who won

00:38:43.080 and who lost based on the little one-liners and so forth and the talking points that they

00:38:49.060 selectively remember.

00:38:50.940 But people can switch perspectives and say, well, what if I was, instead of being a Republican,

00:38:56.440 what if I was a Democrat or vice versa?

00:38:58.540 They can start to pull up these exceptions that they might have normally missed.

00:39:01.920 Just like you can probably pull up information about the positive aspects of your relationship

00:39:07.940 with your partner when you're not fighting with them.

00:39:11.880 Okay.

00:39:11.980 So that's interesting.

00:39:12.780 So how do you manage that?

00:39:14.160 Are there any tips on how to make sure you're remembering things correctly and you're not

00:39:18.780 messing things up just so it updates and matches your current state?

00:39:24.200 Yes.

00:39:24.660 I think one factor to keep in mind is just, first of all, how much you're going to search

00:39:30.020 for information and memory that confirms your beliefs.

00:39:32.580 So on average, people tend to think of them, recall memories that are more positive and

00:39:38.780 that make themselves look better than they really were.

00:39:42.340 So if I recall some experience from some time in my life, I might actually think of it,

00:39:49.380 think of an experience that's going to be more positive, but I'll also remember myself

00:39:53.620 in a way that's maybe been more of a positive role than actually transpired.

00:39:58.440 So being aware of these biases, I think, is the first step.

00:40:02.120 Another step is allowing ourselves the time to think critically.

00:40:07.100 And again, what often happens is we're under stress.

00:40:09.320 You shut down the prefrontal cortex.

00:40:10.760 You move on to the next thing very quickly.

00:40:12.720 And it makes us very susceptible to misinformation.

00:40:15.820 It makes us very susceptible to manipulation.

00:40:18.800 But likewise, I think one thing we can do to help ourselves is surround ourselves by diverse

00:40:24.480 perspectives and give ourselves a chance to remember things from other perspectives and

00:40:29.720 think that maybe the way I see the world now is just one view of how the world could be.

00:40:35.580 What's one thing that people can start doing today to get more out of their memory?

00:40:41.180 Oh, so much.

00:40:42.700 What I would say is probably the one thing that I would say is be comfortable with discomfort.

00:40:49.900 And what I mean by that, and I don't mean like that necessarily, be a man, man up.

00:40:54.840 I know we're in the art of manliness.

00:40:56.640 But what I do mean is that I think we often assume that memory should be effortless.

00:41:02.580 Things should just easily come to mind and we should be able to memorize things easily.

00:41:07.340 And you look at the kid who gets straight A's and you're like, oh, that person's smart.

00:41:11.120 That person's doing great in school.

00:41:13.460 But really, the person who's getting straight A's is not learning.

00:41:15.840 In theory, if you're learning, it means that you're actually struggling and you're failing

00:41:21.020 to recall things sometimes and that you can get the most learning by pushing yourself and

00:41:26.940 exposing the weaknesses in your memory so that you can then capture those weaknesses and fix

00:41:32.600 them.

00:41:33.540 Likewise, if you want to be more creative, you need to expose yourself to sources of memories

00:41:39.560 that are very idiosyncratic and weird.

00:41:41.540 If you just kind of expose yourself to gobs and gobs of the same media, whether it's reading

00:41:48.700 material or music or people who you interact with, and they're all from the same demographic

00:41:54.200 group, same culture, same beliefs, you might as well be ChatGPT.

00:41:58.540 You're not going to be that creative or interesting.

00:42:01.380 And if you want to be accurate and you don't want to be remembering things in a way that's

00:42:07.060 basically making you susceptible for manipulation, you need to surround yourself with sources of

00:42:12.340 information and people who have different beliefs, again, so that you can really constantly

00:42:17.380 challenge yourself to challenge your view of how the past transpired.

00:42:24.300 And all of those things can be uncomfortable, but they can also be sources of curiosity.

00:42:28.420 And curiosity is a major driver of learning and has enormous effects on the brain, as we've

00:42:33.100 shown in our lab.

00:42:33.920 Well, Char, this has been a great conversation.

00:42:36.360 Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:42:39.200 Well, you can definitely read my book, Why We Remember.

00:42:42.000 You can also go to my website, charnranganath.com, to get on our mailing list for more information.

00:42:48.660 And you can find me on Instagram, where we post periodically, including some tips about memory

00:42:53.840 from time to time.

00:42:54.860 And that's at the Memory Doc.

00:42:56.960 Fantastic.

00:42:57.420 Well, Char and Ranganath, thanks so much for your time.

00:42:59.080 It's been a pleasure.

00:42:59.960 Thanks for having me, Brad.

00:43:00.960 This has been fun.

00:43:01.660 My guest here is Char and Ranganath.

00:43:04.380 He's the author of the book, Why We Remember.

00:43:06.240 It's available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

00:43:08.700 You can find more information about his work at his website, charnranganath.com.

00:43:11.960 Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash memory.

00:43:14.700 We can find links to resources.

00:43:15.860 We delve deeper into this topic.

00:43:17.040 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast.

00:43:27.280 Make sure to check out our website at artofmanless.com.

00:43:29.340 We find our podcast archives.

00:43:30.980 And while you're there, sign up for our newsletter.

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The Art of Manliness - April 22, 2024

Why Your Memory Seems Bad (It’s Not Just Age)

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