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The Michael Shermer Show # 435

Today on the show, UC Davis neuroscientist Charan Ranganath shares what his research reveals about the selective nature of memory.

Over your lifetime, you will be exposed to far more information than any organism could possibly store. According to one estimate, the average American is exposed to thirty-four gigabytes (or 11.8 hours’ worth) of information a day.

We are not supposed to remember all of it. The mechanisms of memory were not cobbled together to help us remember the name of that guy we met at that thing. To quote British psychologist Sir Frederic Bartlett, one of the most important figures in the history of memory research, “literal recall is extraordinarily unimportant.”

Shermer and Ranganath discuss: how memories are stored by neurons • forgetting — memory in there somewhere or lost forever? • episodic, semantic, working, flashbulb, long-term, and short-term memory • recovered memories vs. false memories + confabulation, conflation • Alzheimer’s, dementia, senility • PTSD and bad memories • déjá vu • memory triggers • learning as a form of memory • social memories (extended self) • MEMself vs. POVself • uploading memories into the cloud • improving memory: what works, what doesn’t.

Charan Ranganath is the author of Why We Remember and a Professor at the Center for Neuroscience and Department of Psychology at UC Davis. For over 25 years, he has studied the mechanisms in the brain that allow us to remember past events, using brain imaging techniques, computational modeling and studies of patients with memory disorders.

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