We’ve all been in a similar situation—you lock your front door for the umpteenth time in a given week only to panic minutes later when you’re driving to work as you struggle to remember if you actually locked the door.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone, and you’re also not losing your mind. A new study published in Neurobiology of Learning and Memory by Rice University psychologists found that certain experiences are better remembered by most people, while other experiences, like locking the door behind us, are more easily forgotten.

However, the story isn’t quite that simple, according to researchers Fernanda Morales-Calva , a Rice graduate student, and Stephanie Leal , assistant professor of psychological sciences.

They conducted the study to better understand just how human memory works. They said humans tend to focus on remembering certain aspects within an experience more than others such as the big picture of what happened rather than the details.

“Struggling to remember is one of those things we all experience,” Morales-Calva said.

“But when it comes to understanding memory, there’s a lot to be discovered about how it actually works. And there’s a new area of memory research that’s trying to tap into why we remember certain things better than others.”

For example, Morales-Calva said people looking back on the last year may recall doing a lot of different things, but only a few of them might really stand out in great detail.

Previous research has found that these memorable experiences for one person are very likely memorable for another person, like birthday parties, deaths of a loved one and more,” Leal said.

“These are often positive or negative experiences. This knowledge has helped us design research studies looking at memory performance.”

The researchers evaluated memory by showing pictures to their study participants. During a memory test, some of these images were repeated, some were brand new, while others were very similar and difficult to distinguish from one another.



Sources - https://neurosciencenews.com/forgetting-memory-neuroscience-25957/