Skip to content
Who's in the Video
A man wearing glasses and a jacket.
André Fenton
André Fenton, professor of neural science at New York University, investigates the molecular, neural, behavioral, and computational aspects of memory. He studies how brains store experiences as memories, how they[…]
Go to Profile
Lisa Genova
Lisa Genova
Lisa Genova is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Still Alice, Left Neglected, Love Anthony, Inside the O’Briens, and Every Note Played. Still Alice was adapted into[…]
Go to Profile
In Partnership With
Unlikely Collaborators
Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

Our memories aren’t perfect records of the past — they’re reconstructions shaped by brain activity. Neuroscientists Lisa Genova and André Fenton explain that a memory is created through neural patterns that can subtly shift each time we recall it. We may unknowingly add or lose details over time. Understanding this science helps us approach memory with more humility and empathy, and deepens our insight into how memories shape one’s identity and beliefs.

We created this video for Brain Briefs, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Visit Perception Box to see more in this series.

LISA GENOVA: Our memories for what happened are not reality. Memory is the pattern of neural activity that represents what you experienced when you learned something in the first place, reactivated as a neural circuit in your brain.

ANDRÉ FENTON: In a human brain, there's just under a hundred billion neurons. One neuron is better or worse able to communicate with the neuron that it's connected to, or one of the 10,000 it’s connected to. When they're not used repeatedly, or when they're used rarely, or in a mistimed manner, then those synapses tend to weaken.

And the strengthening and the weakening of those synapses is an active biochemical process that makes those adjustments. And when those adjustments persist, that's what we call memory.

LISA GENOVA: Your hippocampus is your memory weaver. This is the part of your brain that links together the sights, the sounds, the smells, the feelings, the language, the information so that they become connected into a neural circuit.

It turns out that every time we recall a memory for something that happened, we have the opportunity to change it — often not consciously. We might add a detail. We might leave a detail out. If somebody else experienced the same event, they might add some information that we agree with, and so we'll add that to our memory.

ANDRÉ FENTON: We're not simply reproducing what it is that we had experienced. We're reconstructing; we are building a new experience. And we tend to build those experiences according to the stories that make sense to our minds.

By recognizing that we all have a distorted understanding and recollection of the perception called memory, it demands that you act in the world with a certain sense of humility and empathy for others.

LISA GENOVA: And so the more that we understand about the biology of memory, the science of memory, the more we can develop a better relationship with it.

Your identity is so closely tied to your ability to remember. Your ability to remember what happened — the story of your life — is really who we say we are.

Up Next
Related