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30 September 2015

Is your memory normal?

Is your memory normal?

(Image: Darren Hopes)

I’M NOT a person for a pub quiz team. I can dredge up obscure details from conversations long ago, but I can never remember the heights of the mountains I have climbed or the names of pop bands.

My colleague Richard is the opposite. He’s great at remembering facts, but all at sea when it comes to details of his past personal experiences. Should he or I be worried?

Memory is actually mostly about forgetting: all brains discard most of the sensory data they receive. “Tomorrow you’ll remember reasonably well a conversation you had today,” says neurobiologist James McGaugh of the University of California, Irvine. “Within a week, a lot of that information will have been lost.” Within a year, the conversation might be gone entirely.

Direct sensory memories only last a few moments. Some go on to make short-term memories, such as the phone number you just dialled. Exact figures are hard to pin down, but an average brain can probably keep around four things in mind at once, for up to 30 seconds.

Only really important or meaningful information makes it into long-term memory, such as a conversation that contained a personal insult. “We have selectively strong memories for events that are emotionally arousing,” says McGaugh. Long-term memories divide into two main types. Semantic memories record facts, such as the concept of a train. Episodic ones are about events we have experienced, such as a particular train journey.

We probably all know someone who has an encyclopaedic factual memory, but extraordinary episodic memories are a more recent discovery. “These people remember events from years

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