January 9, 2026 • 31 mins
How does memory work? Why can’t we remember things that happened when we were babies? Why do we forget? Why are some people forgetful? Why do elephants have such good memories. What’s this episode about? I forgot! Oh yeah, how does our memory work! Our guest is Dr. Nick Turk-Browne, professor of psychology at Yale University.
Download Transcript
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jane (00:20):
This is But Why
Public. I'm Jane Lindholm. Onthis show, we take questions
from curious kids all over theworld, and we find answers. Have
you ever...Have youever...shoot, I forgot what I
was gonna say! Good thingtoday's show is all about
(00:42):
memory. We're going to talk withsomeone who can help us
understand why we forget thingsand how we remember.
Nick Turke-Brown (00:48):
I study how the brain works and the magical
things it does that help youlearn and remember and make
decisions and get along withyour siblings and be creative,
make art or music, have ideasand go about and grow into, you
know, adults.
Jane (01:08):
That's Nick Turke-Brown. He's a professor of psychology
at Yale University. Psychologyis the study of how we think and
behave and how our minds work.Professor Turke-Brown was
excited to hear what kinds ofquestions you've sent us about
memory. So let's get right tothem.
Brynn (01:26):
Hello, I'm Brynn. I'm 11 years old, and I live in New
Katie, Texas. How does memorywork?
Logan (01:33):
Hi, I'm Logan. I'm six years old. I'm from [unclear].
How do humans remember stuff?
Zeph (01:40):
My name is Zeph, I'm six years old, and I live in Austin,
Texas, and my question is, howdo we remember things?
Clara (01:48):
I'm Clara and I'm five years old. I live in Oak Park,
Illinois. How do you remembersomething?
Noah (01:58):
My name is Noah, and I'm three years old. I live in
Sunnyvale, California. How dobrains remember things?
Nick Turke-Brown (02:08):
Memory is basically your brain keeping a
record of things that youexperience. So when you see
something or you hear something,or you go somewhere, that
changes your brain, and yourbrain is able to then hold on to
that experience and carry itforward in time until you get
(02:30):
reminded of something, or yousee something again, or you go
back to the same place, andyou're transported back to the
last time you saw that thing, oryou were in that place. And so
basically it has to do with theeffect of seeing or hearing or
doing something on what's inyour brain. And so your brain is
(02:51):
like a recording device. Youcould think of it like a phone
or a camera, but it's happeningall the time without you trying.
And it's really amazing how wellit works. So that's essentially
what's storing memories, is thatwhen you have experiences, your
brain changes.
Jane (03:09):
The really cool thing about that is there are
different parts of the brainthat store different things and
help you form different types ofmemories.
Nick Turke-Brown (03:17):
Some parts of your brain remember when you
learn how to ride a bike, youknow that experience of falling
off and then getting going andpedaling and moving fast, and
that part of memory, you couldthink of it, what we might call
motor memory, or how to dothings, is supported by some
parts of the brain. But thereare other kinds of memories,
(03:40):
too. You have preferences, likeyou like macaroni and cheese, or
you like pizza. Those arepreferences, things that you
find rewarding or valuable.There are other parts of the
brain that store those kinds ofmemories. When you eat something
that you really like, or whenyou do an activity that you
really enjoy. Then we have otherkinds of memories that are, I
think of as maybe what peoplenormally refer to as memory, is
(04:03):
like remembering a specificevent. So I might remember going
on a vacation or my lastbirthday party, or when I got
grounded, or when I got myfirst, you know, tablet, or when
I had some very memorableexperience visiting a
grandparent, those those eventsin our life, that's a different
(04:27):
kind of memory, and that'ssupported by another part of the
brain. And so that's kind of theanswer is your brain is
influenced by what youexperience. Different parts of
the brain are storing differentparts of the experience.
Jane (04:40):
Not only are different parts of the brain involved in
recording and saving thosedifferent types of thoughts or
experiences, but there are acouple different stages when it
comes to remembering them. Thefirst one is that initial stage
of thinking or feeling orexperiencing something and kind
of recording it in your brain.
Nick Turke-Brown (05:00):
That's what we call encoding. It's like the
storage of the memory, but tomake it stick, your brain sort
of chews on it a little bit. Ithas to keep processing that
information, and that's whathappens during sleep. You think
of dreaming as a kind of chewingon your memories, and what that
does is it makes them morestable. It helps them stick
(05:22):
around longer. So that's thesecond part. So you initially,
you store the memory, or encodethe memory, and then you
consolidate the memory duringsleep, and then the final part
is retrieval. You have your nextbirthday party and you remember
the last one, or you go to aplace that you haven't been in a
while and you remember that, oryou remember some piece of
(05:48):
information that somebody toldyou, or you remember how to do
something, and you're accessingsomething that's been stored and
consolidated in your brain. Sothat's what I would say what
memory is, it's changes in yourbrain, different parts of your
brain, and there's thesedifferent stages of encoding,
consolidation and retrieval.
Jane (05:58):
You know, it's interesting. You mentioned
something like our preferences,the things we like and dislike.
And I hadn't thought of that asmemory, but of course, it's tied
to your experiences in the past.So something like, if you really
like cheesecake, but then onetime you have cheesecake, and
then the next day you get theflu and you throw up the
(06:20):
cheesecake, you're gonnaremember that and you're gonna
not like cheesecake anymore,even though maybe those two
things actually didn't haveanything to do with each other.
Your brain makes an association,and that can change your
preferences, which is, ofcourse, tied to your experiences
and memory.
Nick Turke-Brown (06:36):
Yeah, that's there's a name for that. It's
called the Garcia Effect. So itmight have been the cheesecake
that made you feel sick, butbecause the cheesecake occurred
before you got sick, it getsassociated with that feeling of
sickness, and then youafterwards, you might not be
attracted to it as much, or likeit as much, or you might want to
(06:56):
avoid it. And so, yeah, that's akind of memory. It's very fast
memory. That only has to happenonce, and then for the rest of
your life, you might not likecheesecake anymore.
Jane (07:06):
What a bummer.
Nick Turke-Brown (07:07):
Yeah.
Jane (07:07):
Yeah, and then those ideas like learning how to ride a bike
and remembering how to do it, orwhen you have something that you
have to learn in science classand you're going to have a test
about it and so you have toremember it. And often, we're
told, if you're studying tolearn something for a class, the
best thing you can do is get agood night's sleep before your
(07:27):
test. So that's what you'retalking about, Nick, with the
idea that your brain needs toget all of that stored in the
right place so that you can pullit out when you need to retrieve
it, or when you need to knowthat fact. So sleep really is
important for learning andmemory.
Nick Turke-Brown (07:43):
Definitely. People remember better, and they
not only remember the details ofwhat they learned before after
sleep, but you're also able touse that experience in new ways,
what's called generalization,taking something you learned
before and applying it in a newsetting. We do that in school
all the time. You learn someconcept about biology, and then
(08:05):
you have to apply it in a newway, or you learn how to use a
certain trick in math class, andnow you have to use that to
answer a new question that youhaven't thought about before. So
that ability to take memoriesand use them in new ways, that
is the specific benefit ofsleep, and you can see why
that'd be really important for atest.
Jane (08:24):
We got a lot of kids who want to know why they can't
remember things from when theywere really little.
Sage (08:31):
Hi, my name is Sage. I'm eight years old. I live in Los
Angeles, California. Why do weforget things that happened when
we were babies?
Lola (08:40):
Hi, my name is Lola. I'm eight years old. I live in Palos
Heights, Illinois. Why can't youremember stuff from when you
were little?
Iris (08:50):
Hi, my name is Iris. I am nine years old, and I live in
Melbourne, Australia. Why can'twe remember when we were little?
Julius (08:57):
Hi, my name is Julius. I am seven, eight years old. I
live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.Why do people forget things from
when they're little?
Natalie (09:10):
Hi, my name is Natalie. I'm eight years old, and I live
in netherford, New Jersey. Whycan't we remember when we were
babies?
Archer and Maddie (09:19):
My name is Archer, and I'm seven years old.
And my name is Maddie, and I'm10 years old. We live in
Melbourne, Australia. Why can'twe remember things from when
we're little?
Nick Turke-Brown (09:33):
Yeah, this is what's known as infantile
amnesia. So amnesia is a fancyword that means forgetting.
Infantile means from the timethat you were an infant or a
baby. Generally, as older kidsand adults, we don't remember
much from the first few years ofour lives. Usually, if you ask
(09:56):
somebody, what's your firstmemory, if they're old enough,
they'll they'll generally say,you know, somewhere between four
and seven years old. Now, ifyou're a five year old, you
might remember something fromwhen you were two or three, but
by the time you're seven oreight or nine, that's going to
be gone. So why? It's a deepscientific mystery. It's one of
(10:17):
the topics that my lab at YaleUniversity works on. We study
what's happening in the brainsof babies and toddlers as
they're forming memories. And sowe're trying to figure out why
it is that we don't rememberwhat happened during that time.
Now, I think it's important tosay it's not just that time
passes and we forget things. Soit's not just that, you know,
(10:38):
that was a long time ago whenyou were a baby and so of
course, you forget it. Becauselater on in life, you're going
to remember things from a longtime ago, you know, from when
you're 10 years old or 20 yearsold, but there's a specific time
when you're sort of zero to fouryears old where you don't
remember very much. So we'retalking before about how there's
different stages of memory, likethere's the encoding, the
(11:00):
storage part of the memory,there's the consolidation, and
then there's the retrieval, likeaccessing the memory. And so
each of those stages is apossible point at which you
might have a failure, whenyou're really young, and be
unable to kind of access thosememories. So is it that babies
don't store memories, so there'snothing to retrieve later on
(11:22):
because you didn't store amemory in the first place? Or do
they store them fine, but laterin life, we just can't access
them for some reason, we can'tretrieve them? And so our
research suggests that startingaround 12 months, so around one
year old, babies are able tostart storing memories in their
brain. And this is much earlierthan people's first memories, so
(11:45):
it suggests that there arememories being stored by around
one year of age, and we loseaccess to them later on. And so
we're trying to figure out whyis it that we can't access those
memories? And there's thethere's the sort of science
fiction possibility that westill have those memories in our
brain from when we were babies,and we just can't get back to
(12:05):
them using the normal way. Andso maybe there are, you know,
tricks we could use to rememberthings from earlier in our life.
Jane (12:12):
You know, if you spend time with a very young kid, if
maybe you have a little siblingwho's one or two, you might be
aware that they seem to havereally great memories, because
you might have a two year oldbrother or sister who every time
they pass one street, they justsay "Bird!" because you saw a
(12:33):
goose there once, and you wouldforget that there was a goose
there one time, because iteither wasn't a very important
moment, or you've got a lot ofother things you're trying to
remember, but that toddlerremembers that one little
detail. It sometimes seems liketoddlers have really great
memories.
Nick Turke-Brown (12:50):
Yeah, I think that's right. That's part of the
reason we started studying this.How is it that as adults, we
don't remember anything for thatperiod, and yet, young kids
often have, like, pretty goodmemories?They remember a person
that they met, or a magicianthey saw at the at the park, or
a song that they love, or theyremember that after this turn in
the road you get to theirdaycare, or you remember some
(13:13):
little toy you know that theygot on Halloween. So I think
that infants and toddlers havememory, and for whatever reason,
those memories don't stickaround, and they might still be
there and just inaccessible, orthey might get lost with the
passage of time, but that's whatwe're working on. It's
definitely true that kids,especially babies and toddlers,
(13:38):
are learning a tremendousamount. We talked about learning
how to ride a bike or developingfood preferences. That's all
happening in the first coupleyears of life. If you think
about learning language, everybaby who's brought up in a home
where they hear a languagelearns that language without
(13:58):
really trying, and actually,they learn it much better than
an adult or an older kid canlearn that language. We're
really, really good at learningearly in life. We learn how to
walk. We learn aboutrelationships with siblings and
with parents. We learn aboutfood. We learn about our home
environment. We learn the namesof objects. So infancy is an
(14:20):
incredible period of learning,and that makes it even more
mysterious why we don't rememberanything from that time.
Bennett (14:27):
I am Bennett. I live in Sammamish, Washington, and I
want to know how and why dobrains forget.
Mac (14:35):
My name is Mac. I'm six. I'm from Indianapolis. Why do we
forget?
Clara (14:42):
Hello. My name is Clara. I am six years old. I am from
Superior, Colorado, and myquestion is why do people forget
things?
Nick Turke-Brown (14:55):
Forgetting is sometimes frustrating, like
you're trying to find a toy oryou're trying to remember
somebody's name, but a lot ofthe time, forgetting is not such
a bad thing. Memory is limited,and forgetting helps clean up
our memories. So when you try toremember something, it might be
(15:15):
hard to access it, and that'sbecause a lot of other memories
are coming to mind. You might betrying to remember one thing and
you're remembering otherunrelated things, and that's
called interference. So part ofthe reason we forget things is
because other unrelated memoriesare coming to mind and
distracting us or confusing us.So forgetting is a way of, kind
of cleaning up memory andremoving or reducing
(15:38):
interference. And we think offorgetting as bad, but I want to
emphasize that some forgettingis good, and it makes your
overall memory better. It makesit better able to remember the
most important things.
Jane (15:51):
So forgetting isn't all bad news, but it can also be so
inconvenient when it happens.
Ella (15:59):
Hi. My name is Ella. I am seven years old. I'm from
Bannockburn in New Zealand, andI would like to know why do we
forget what we are going to saywhile we are waiting for our
turn to speak?
Nick Turke-Brown (16:15):
Yeah, so I think there's a lot of the kinds
of memory we've been talkingabout: remembering a birthday
party or how to ride a bike, orfacts that you learn in class, I
would call those with long termmemory, memories that stick
around a long time. There'sanother kind of memory, called
short term memory, which refersto holding on to information in
(16:36):
our mind for a short period oftime. So if you're in class and
you're waiting to ask aquestion, you might have thought
about this question. You'rewaiting your turn, and you have
your hand up, and you're holdingthat question in your mind, and
then you get called on and youcan't remember what you wanted
to say. That's a failure ofshort term memory. And what
(16:56):
happens in short term memory isthat in order to keep that
memory alive, you have toactively think about it; you
have to focus on it. And soanything that happens that might
distract yourattention--somebody else asking
a question that you think isinteresting, or, you know, I
don't know, a siren that passeson the street, or maybe some
(17:17):
other question that comes tomind in response to what
somebody else is talking about,that could distract you. And
when you get distracted, youlose your grip on that short
term memory that you had inmind. So in that situation, it's
probably about distraction.Those kinds of short term
memories also just get weakerover time. So if you're
(17:37):
rehearsing something in yourmind, you're holding on to some
information, the longer you haveto do that, the more likely you
are to forget it.
Jane (17:43):
We were talking earlier about how important sleep is to
memory, but Claire is wondering,
Claire (17:50):
Why do we not remember things we say in the middle of
the night when we say we want toremember them in the morning?
Jane (17:57):
And is it the same thing if, let's say you fall asleep in
the car, and your adult wakesyou up to go to your bed, and
you say something, and then thenext morning, they say, do you
remember that silly thing yousaid when I was carrying you
back to your bed? And you'relike, No, I don't remember that!
Same type of thing?
Nick Turke-Brown (18:14):
Yeah, it's probably similar. If you're less
awake, it's very hard to payattention when you're dozing
off. So it might be you're alsojust not storing memories very
well at that point.
Jane (18:23):
It's fascinating to think about how our brains are hard at
work while we're both awake andwhile we're asleep, even though
we're not necessarily aware ofall that work our brains are
doing to consolidate, store,retrieve and even remove
memories. After the break (18:37):
why are some people forgetful, and
do elephants really neverforget?
BREAK (18:44):
BREAK
Jane (18:47):
This is But Why! I'm Jane Lindholm, and today we're
learning about how our brainsremember things with Professor
Nick Turke-Brown of YaleUniversity.
Ava (18:57):
Hello. My name is Ava. I'm nine years old. I'm from
Peterborough, England. Why aresome people forgetful?
Nick Turke-Brown (19:05):
Yeah, you know, some people have better
memories. Some people have worsememories. Even within what you
would expect of healthy youknow, typical kids and adults,
there are people who are moreforgetful than others. There's
even people who have reallyamazing memories, you know,
better memories than everybodyelse in general. But all of this
(19:29):
is pretty normal, like evenpeople who you would think of as
forgetful, are still healthy andremember what they need to
remember to do well. There arepeople who have worse memories
because of medical conditions,like if they have something
called mild cognitive impairmentor dementia, or you might have
(19:51):
heard of Alzheimer's disease.These are medical conditions
that make memory much worse,where you forget loved ones,
even. But within the healthykind of typically developing
population, there's variation,but it's all pretty normal and
to be expected. And again,remembering more is not always
better. What you would want toremember is the important
(20:14):
things, not everything.
Tyce (20:15):
Hi, I'm Tice. I am nine years old. I live in Bluffdale,
Utah. Why do we forget things?And what does our brain do with
the things we forget?
Nick Turke-Brown (20:27):
Well, there's lots of different reasons you
can forget. Like, the memoriescan be sort of erased. How
memories are stored in the brainis through cells in the brain
called neurons. These are likecells in the rest of your body,
but neurons are cells in yourbrain, and they they connect
with one another. They toucheach other. And how they connect
(20:50):
with one another is how memoriesare stored. Those are called
synapses. Those are how twocells talk to each other, and
the pattern of how cells areconnected to each other is how
memories are stored. This isdifferent from our computer
stores, you know, a file or aphoto, but our brains store
memory is that way. And so ifyou lose those connections,
either the cells themselves die,sometimes over time, or you lose
(21:14):
some of the connections breakdown, or the brain region grows
or changes in its composition,those memories can essentially
get get erased so that they'regone. That's one kind of change
that happens in the brain. Thatwas one of the theories of
infantile amnesia that we weretalking about before, is that as
you get older, and that sort ofthree to four year old range,
(21:36):
you have a lot of new cells inyour parts your brain that store
memories, and they might beoverwriting memories that you
already have in there. That'scalled neurogenesis, like the
birth of new neurons. So that'sone kind of erasing.
Another kind of forgetting thathappens in the brain is when
there's a disconnect between howthe memory is stored and then
(21:56):
how you access it. So you mighthave some cells that are
connected in the brain throughsynapses in a certain way that
stores a memory. But if, whenyou see a familiar person or you
go to a familiar place, itdoesn't get matched to that
memory, you're not going to beable to call it to mind and
retrieve it and remember thatearlier experience. So it's not
(22:17):
that the memory itself is gone,it's that you can't get it. It's
like if you have a book and youcan't find your book, right, you
know you have the book you mightlook on your bookshelf and you
just can't find it. So you can'tread what's inside it. It's that
kind of an issue. The book stillexists. It's just under your bed
or somewhere else. You justcan't get to it. And so that's
(22:37):
another reason why we forget achange that happens in the brain
is that the cues, the things inthe world that remind us of
things, just don't map onto orcan't be used to access the
memory. And for example, whenyou meet somebody you know at
the park or at school, you don'tjust remember that person's face
(22:59):
or their name. You link thatperson to the place that they're
in. So you remember that you metthis kid on the playground, and
if you see that same friend atthe grocery store, you might not
even recognize them, becausethat's not where you saw them
the first time. So memories arestored in what's called a
context, in a place, in asituation. And so a lot of
(23:22):
forgetting occurs because we'renot in the right context. You go
to the grocery store, you're notexpecting to see a friend that
you just met on the playground,and so it's harder to recognize
them. And so a lot of forgettinghappens when we're just not in
the right mindset in order toaccess a memory.
Jane (23:39):
We have just a couple more questions. One is from Poppy,
who wonders...
Poppy (23:43):
Why, when you bump your head hard on something hard, you
lose your memory?
Nick Turke-Brown (23:49):
Yeah. Hopefully Poppy's not bumping
their head a lot like this,because it's, it's usually not a
great sign if you have anaccident, or you fall off your
bike, or you fall down on theplayground and you bump your
head and you can't remembersomething, you definitely should
tell a parent or and maybe gosee a doctor. That can be a sign
(24:13):
of a concussion or sometimescalled a traumatic brain injury,
TBI. So that's not a commonthing, hopefully, to bump your
head in a way that would makeyou forget. But it is the case
that when people get inaccidents like a car accident or
a bicycle accident, or fall on aplayground, that can cause
(24:36):
either temporary or longerlasting damage to the brain. It
could be that in the moment, youknow you're playing with your
friends, and you fall and thenyou can't remember what you were
just doing a moment ago. Thatcould be because you maybe you
lose consciousness, or maybeyou're in a lot of pain, and you
sort of forget what you weredoing. So that that would be a
(24:58):
less scary version of this. Butif you had a more significant
accident that caused braindamage, that can cause damage to
parts of your brain that arereally important for memory, and
so it's not unusual in cases ofbad accidents like that, to
damage some of the parts of thebrain that are important for
memory, or some of theconnections in the brain that
(25:18):
help you to take a memory andthen act on it. So I would think
of that as, hopefully, a rareevent, but it is a real
consequence of accidents thatpeople have problems with
memory.
Annika (25:29):
My name is Annika, and I'm five years old, and I live
in Chicago, Illinois. How dogrownups remember everything?
Nick Turke-Brown (25:40):
Well, the good news for Annika is that grown
ups do not remember everything.
Jane (25:46):
I can say that's true.
Nick Turke-Brown (25:47):
I can say that as a grown up, but it sometimes
feels like that when you'retalking with your parents,
they're like, know it alls orhave all the they have all the
answers when you ask them aquestion.
Jane (25:57):
Or they remember, I told you to clean your room
yesterday.
Nick Turke-Brown (26:00):
They remember some deal they made with you.
But the answer is that grown upsdon't remember everything.
Adults and kids, we store somememories, but not everything. It
is also the case so that adultshave more experiences. So if you
think of what we were talkingabout before as memory being
about, you have some experience,you're doing something, and your
(26:22):
brain is plastic. It's like PlayDoh, it's being molded based on
your experience. Adults justhave more of that. You know,
they've gone through school,they might have a job, they have
a family, they have some skills,they have a lot of
responsibilities. So they'vegained knowledge over time, and
they can use that knowledge toanswer questions or even to
(26:44):
store memories better. The moreyou know about the world, the
easier it is to store memories,because you're taking things you
already know and recombiningthem in new ways. So it is the
case that adults have moreknowledge. That's a kind of
memory. It's often calledsemantic memory, memory for
facts or details. That issomething that increases over
your lifespan as you have moreand more experiences, as you
(27:06):
spend longer in school, and asyou you know, learn new things.
So adults do have more of that,but I wouldn't say that they
remember all of the events orexperiences that they've had in
life any better than than anolder child would.
Eva (27:19):
My name is Eva. I am eight years old. I live in Dayton,
Ohio, and my question is, how doelephants remember everything?
Nick Turke-Brown (27:27):
Yeah, it's really interesting. You know,
elephants have good socialmemories for other elephants.
They have good memories fornavigation routes. So they kind
of move a lot through theirthrough their environment, and
they can remember differentlocations in their environment
well. They have an interestingsocial group dynamics, and so
they remember about how otherelephants are behaving. And so
(27:50):
they do have good memories, butI don't think they're
exceptional. Most large animalsand even a lot of small animals
have great memories. It's reallyimportant to survive in the
natural world, to learn fromtrial and error, to learn from
(28:11):
experience, to learn what's safeand what's not safe, or who's
kind and who's unkind. Evolutionhas endowed our brains with the
ability to store memories, andthat's true of almost all
species. In animals likemammals, we have brains that are
(28:33):
really evolved, that havecertain parts of the brain, like
a region called the hippocampus.It's like a hippopotamus, but
hippo-campus. And that brainregion is in mice, in elephants,
in humans, and it storesmemories in all of those
animals. So animals vary a lotin what kinds of things they
(28:53):
remember. You know, mice mightremember how things smell. Dogs
might remember how things smellbetter than humans. Elephants
might remember largeenvironments better because they
move a lot. So there aredifferent kinds of knowledge or
memories that different animalsneed in order to survive and
thrive in their niche, andhumans have that too. So
(29:14):
elephants, there's kind of thesense that elephants have great
memories. They do have largebrains. They do have some of
these brain structures that arereally important for memory are
large in elephants, and so theyprobably do have great memories,
but so do so do sea lions, so dohumans, so do mice, and without
that, we wouldn't be able tolearn from our mistakes. We
(29:34):
wouldn't be able to makepredictions about what's going
to happen in a new scenario. Wewouldn't be able to build
relationships with other animalsor humans. So memory is really
the core of who we are, andwithout memory, you lose a bit
of your own identity, your ownpersonality.
Jane (29:51):
And don't forget your brain is storing memories all
the time, not just when you'retrying really hard to memorize
something. That includes rightnow. What do you think you're
going to remember from thisepisode? Thanks to Dr Nick
Turke-Brown of Yale Universityfor helping us understand how we
remember and how we forgetthings. He has his own lab where
(30:12):
he studies memory. As always, ifyou have a question about
anything, have an adult record,you asking it on a smartphone
using an app like Voice Memos.Then have your adult email the
file toquestions@butwhykids.org. But
Why is produced by Sarah Baik,Melody Bodette and me, Jane
(30:32):
Lindholm, at Vermont Public anddistributed by PRX. Our video
producer is Joey Palumbo, andour theme music is by Luke
Reynolds, if you like our show,please have your adults help you
give us a thumbs up or a reviewon whatever podcast platform you
use to listen to us, it helpsother kids and families find us.
We'll be back in two weeks withan all new episode. Until then,
(30:57):
stay curious!
This is But Why
Public. I'm Jane Lindholm. Onthis show, we take questions
from curious kids all over theworld, and we find answers. Have
you ever...Have youever...shoot, I forgot what I
was gonna say! Good thingtoday's show is all about
(00:42):
memory. We're going to talk withsomeone who can help us
understand why we forget thingsand how we remember.
Nick Turke-Brown (00:48):
I study how the brain works and the magical
things it does that help youlearn and remember and make
decisions and get along withyour siblings and be creative,
make art or music, have ideasand go about and grow into, you
know, adults.
Jane (01:08):
That's Nick Turke-Brown. He's a professor of psychology
at Yale University. Psychologyis the study of how we think and
behave and how our minds work.Professor Turke-Brown was
excited to hear what kinds ofquestions you've sent us about
memory. So let's get right tothem.
Brynn (01:26):
Hello, I'm Brynn. I'm 11 years old, and I live in New
Katie, Texas. How does memorywork?
Logan (01:33):
Hi, I'm Logan. I'm six years old. I'm from [unclear].
How do humans remember stuff?
Zeph (01:40):
My name is Zeph, I'm six years old, and I live in Austin,
Texas, and my question is, howdo we remember things?
Clara (01:48):
I'm Clara and I'm five years old. I live in Oak Park,
Illinois. How do you remembersomething?
Noah (01:58):
My name is Noah, and I'm three years old. I live in
Sunnyvale, California. How dobrains remember things?
Nick Turke-Brown (02:08):
Memory is basically your brain keeping a
record of things that youexperience. So when you see
something or you hear something,or you go somewhere, that
changes your brain, and yourbrain is able to then hold on to
that experience and carry itforward in time until you get
(02:30):
reminded of something, or yousee something again, or you go
back to the same place, andyou're transported back to the
last time you saw that thing, oryou were in that place. And so
basically it has to do with theeffect of seeing or hearing or
doing something on what's inyour brain. And so your brain is
(02:51):
like a recording device. Youcould think of it like a phone
or a camera, but it's happeningall the time without you trying.
And it's really amazing how wellit works. So that's essentially
what's storing memories, is thatwhen you have experiences, your
brain changes.
Jane (03:09):
The really cool thing about that is there are
different parts of the brainthat store different things and
help you form different types ofmemories.
Nick Turke-Brown (03:17):
Some parts of your brain remember when you
learn how to ride a bike, youknow that experience of falling
off and then getting going andpedaling and moving fast, and
that part of memory, you couldthink of it, what we might call
motor memory, or how to dothings, is supported by some
parts of the brain. But thereare other kinds of memories,
(03:40):
too. You have preferences, likeyou like macaroni and cheese, or
you like pizza. Those arepreferences, things that you
find rewarding or valuable.There are other parts of the
brain that store those kinds ofmemories. When you eat something
that you really like, or whenyou do an activity that you
really enjoy. Then we have otherkinds of memories that are, I
think of as maybe what peoplenormally refer to as memory, is
(04:03):
like remembering a specificevent. So I might remember going
on a vacation or my lastbirthday party, or when I got
grounded, or when I got myfirst, you know, tablet, or when
I had some very memorableexperience visiting a
grandparent, those those eventsin our life, that's a different
(04:27):
kind of memory, and that'ssupported by another part of the
brain. And so that's kind of theanswer is your brain is
influenced by what youexperience. Different parts of
the brain are storing differentparts of the experience.
Jane (04:40):
Not only are different parts of the brain involved in
recording and saving thosedifferent types of thoughts or
experiences, but there are acouple different stages when it
comes to remembering them. Thefirst one is that initial stage
of thinking or feeling orexperiencing something and kind
of recording it in your brain.
Nick Turke-Brown (05:00):
That's what we call encoding. It's like the
storage of the memory, but tomake it stick, your brain sort
of chews on it a little bit. Ithas to keep processing that
information, and that's whathappens during sleep. You think
of dreaming as a kind of chewingon your memories, and what that
does is it makes them morestable. It helps them stick
(05:22):
around longer. So that's thesecond part. So you initially,
you store the memory, or encodethe memory, and then you
consolidate the memory duringsleep, and then the final part
is retrieval. You have your nextbirthday party and you remember
the last one, or you go to aplace that you haven't been in a
while and you remember that, oryou remember some piece of
(05:48):
information that somebody toldyou, or you remember how to do
something, and you're accessingsomething that's been stored and
consolidated in your brain. Sothat's what I would say what
memory is, it's changes in yourbrain, different parts of your
brain, and there's thesedifferent stages of encoding,
consolidation and retrieval.
Jane (05:58):
You know, it's interesting. You mentioned
something like our preferences,the things we like and dislike.
And I hadn't thought of that asmemory, but of course, it's tied
to your experiences in the past.So something like, if you really
like cheesecake, but then onetime you have cheesecake, and
then the next day you get theflu and you throw up the
(06:20):
cheesecake, you're gonnaremember that and you're gonna
not like cheesecake anymore,even though maybe those two
things actually didn't haveanything to do with each other.
Your brain makes an association,and that can change your
preferences, which is, ofcourse, tied to your experiences
and memory.
Nick Turke-Brown (06:36):
Yeah, that's there's a name for that. It's
called the Garcia Effect. So itmight have been the cheesecake
that made you feel sick, butbecause the cheesecake occurred
before you got sick, it getsassociated with that feeling of
sickness, and then youafterwards, you might not be
attracted to it as much, or likeit as much, or you might want to
(06:56):
avoid it. And so, yeah, that's akind of memory. It's very fast
memory. That only has to happenonce, and then for the rest of
your life, you might not likecheesecake anymore.
Jane (07:06):
What a bummer.
Nick Turke-Brown (07:07):
Yeah.
Jane (07:07):
Yeah, and then those ideas like learning how to ride a bike
and remembering how to do it, orwhen you have something that you
have to learn in science classand you're going to have a test
about it and so you have toremember it. And often, we're
told, if you're studying tolearn something for a class, the
best thing you can do is get agood night's sleep before your
(07:27):
test. So that's what you'retalking about, Nick, with the
idea that your brain needs toget all of that stored in the
right place so that you can pullit out when you need to retrieve
it, or when you need to knowthat fact. So sleep really is
important for learning andmemory.
Nick Turke-Brown (07:43):
Definitely. People remember better, and they
not only remember the details ofwhat they learned before after
sleep, but you're also able touse that experience in new ways,
what's called generalization,taking something you learned
before and applying it in a newsetting. We do that in school
all the time. You learn someconcept about biology, and then
(08:05):
you have to apply it in a newway, or you learn how to use a
certain trick in math class, andnow you have to use that to
answer a new question that youhaven't thought about before. So
that ability to take memoriesand use them in new ways, that
is the specific benefit ofsleep, and you can see why
that'd be really important for atest.
Jane (08:24):
We got a lot of kids who want to know why they can't
remember things from when theywere really little.
Sage (08:31):
Hi, my name is Sage. I'm eight years old. I live in Los
Angeles, California. Why do weforget things that happened when
we were babies?
Lola (08:40):
Hi, my name is Lola. I'm eight years old. I live in Palos
Heights, Illinois. Why can't youremember stuff from when you
were little?
Iris (08:50):
Hi, my name is Iris. I am nine years old, and I live in
Melbourne, Australia. Why can'twe remember when we were little?
Julius (08:57):
Hi, my name is Julius. I am seven, eight years old. I
live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.Why do people forget things from
when they're little?
Natalie (09:10):
Hi, my name is Natalie. I'm eight years old, and I live
in netherford, New Jersey. Whycan't we remember when we were
babies?
Archer and Maddie (09:19):
My name is Archer, and I'm seven years old.
And my name is Maddie, and I'm10 years old. We live in
Melbourne, Australia. Why can'twe remember things from when
we're little?
Nick Turke-Brown (09:33):
Yeah, this is what's known as infantile
amnesia. So amnesia is a fancyword that means forgetting.
Infantile means from the timethat you were an infant or a
baby. Generally, as older kidsand adults, we don't remember
much from the first few years ofour lives. Usually, if you ask
(09:56):
somebody, what's your firstmemory, if they're old enough,
they'll they'll generally say,you know, somewhere between four
and seven years old. Now, ifyou're a five year old, you
might remember something fromwhen you were two or three, but
by the time you're seven oreight or nine, that's going to
be gone. So why? It's a deepscientific mystery. It's one of
(10:17):
the topics that my lab at YaleUniversity works on. We study
what's happening in the brainsof babies and toddlers as
they're forming memories. And sowe're trying to figure out why
it is that we don't rememberwhat happened during that time.
Now, I think it's important tosay it's not just that time
passes and we forget things. Soit's not just that, you know,
(10:38):
that was a long time ago whenyou were a baby and so of
course, you forget it. Becauselater on in life, you're going
to remember things from a longtime ago, you know, from when
you're 10 years old or 20 yearsold, but there's a specific time
when you're sort of zero to fouryears old where you don't
remember very much. So we'retalking before about how there's
different stages of memory, likethere's the encoding, the
(11:00):
storage part of the memory,there's the consolidation, and
then there's the retrieval, likeaccessing the memory. And so
each of those stages is apossible point at which you
might have a failure, whenyou're really young, and be
unable to kind of access thosememories. So is it that babies
don't store memories, so there'snothing to retrieve later on
(11:22):
because you didn't store amemory in the first place? Or do
they store them fine, but laterin life, we just can't access
them for some reason, we can'tretrieve them? And so our
research suggests that startingaround 12 months, so around one
year old, babies are able tostart storing memories in their
brain. And this is much earlierthan people's first memories, so
(11:45):
it suggests that there arememories being stored by around
one year of age, and we loseaccess to them later on. And so
we're trying to figure out whyis it that we can't access those
memories? And there's thethere's the sort of science
fiction possibility that westill have those memories in our
brain from when we were babies,and we just can't get back to
(12:05):
them using the normal way. Andso maybe there are, you know,
tricks we could use to rememberthings from earlier in our life.
Jane (12:12):
You know, if you spend time with a very young kid, if
maybe you have a little siblingwho's one or two, you might be
aware that they seem to havereally great memories, because
you might have a two year oldbrother or sister who every time
they pass one street, they justsay "Bird!" because you saw a
(12:33):
goose there once, and you wouldforget that there was a goose
there one time, because iteither wasn't a very important
moment, or you've got a lot ofother things you're trying to
remember, but that toddlerremembers that one little
detail. It sometimes seems liketoddlers have really great
memories.
Nick Turke-Brown (12:50):
Yeah, I think that's right. That's part of the
reason we started studying this.How is it that as adults, we
don't remember anything for thatperiod, and yet, young kids
often have, like, pretty goodmemories?They remember a person
that they met, or a magicianthey saw at the at the park, or
a song that they love, or theyremember that after this turn in
the road you get to theirdaycare, or you remember some
(13:13):
little toy you know that theygot on Halloween. So I think
that infants and toddlers havememory, and for whatever reason,
those memories don't stickaround, and they might still be
there and just inaccessible, orthey might get lost with the
passage of time, but that's whatwe're working on. It's
definitely true that kids,especially babies and toddlers,
(13:38):
are learning a tremendousamount. We talked about learning
how to ride a bike or developingfood preferences. That's all
happening in the first coupleyears of life. If you think
about learning language, everybaby who's brought up in a home
where they hear a languagelearns that language without
(13:58):
really trying, and actually,they learn it much better than
an adult or an older kid canlearn that language. We're
really, really good at learningearly in life. We learn how to
walk. We learn aboutrelationships with siblings and
with parents. We learn aboutfood. We learn about our home
environment. We learn the namesof objects. So infancy is an
(14:20):
incredible period of learning,and that makes it even more
mysterious why we don't rememberanything from that time.
Bennett (14:27):
I am Bennett. I live in Sammamish, Washington, and I
want to know how and why dobrains forget.
Mac (14:35):
My name is Mac. I'm six. I'm from Indianapolis. Why do we
forget?
Clara (14:42):
Hello. My name is Clara. I am six years old. I am from
Superior, Colorado, and myquestion is why do people forget
things?
Nick Turke-Brown (14:55):
Forgetting is sometimes frustrating, like
you're trying to find a toy oryou're trying to remember
somebody's name, but a lot ofthe time, forgetting is not such
a bad thing. Memory is limited,and forgetting helps clean up
our memories. So when you try toremember something, it might be
(15:15):
hard to access it, and that'sbecause a lot of other memories
are coming to mind. You might betrying to remember one thing and
you're remembering otherunrelated things, and that's
called interference. So part ofthe reason we forget things is
because other unrelated memoriesare coming to mind and
distracting us or confusing us.So forgetting is a way of, kind
of cleaning up memory andremoving or reducing
(15:38):
interference. And we think offorgetting as bad, but I want to
emphasize that some forgettingis good, and it makes your
overall memory better. It makesit better able to remember the
most important things.
Jane (15:51):
So forgetting isn't all bad news, but it can also be so
inconvenient when it happens.
Ella (15:59):
Hi. My name is Ella. I am seven years old. I'm from
Bannockburn in New Zealand, andI would like to know why do we
forget what we are going to saywhile we are waiting for our
turn to speak?
Nick Turke-Brown (16:15):
Yeah, so I think there's a lot of the kinds
of memory we've been talkingabout: remembering a birthday
party or how to ride a bike, orfacts that you learn in class, I
would call those with long termmemory, memories that stick
around a long time. There'sanother kind of memory, called
short term memory, which refersto holding on to information in
(16:36):
our mind for a short period oftime. So if you're in class and
you're waiting to ask aquestion, you might have thought
about this question. You'rewaiting your turn, and you have
your hand up, and you're holdingthat question in your mind, and
then you get called on and youcan't remember what you wanted
to say. That's a failure ofshort term memory. And what
(16:56):
happens in short term memory isthat in order to keep that
memory alive, you have toactively think about it; you
have to focus on it. And soanything that happens that might
distract yourattention--somebody else asking
a question that you think isinteresting, or, you know, I
don't know, a siren that passeson the street, or maybe some
(17:17):
other question that comes tomind in response to what
somebody else is talking about,that could distract you. And
when you get distracted, youlose your grip on that short
term memory that you had inmind. So in that situation, it's
probably about distraction.Those kinds of short term
memories also just get weakerover time. So if you're
(17:37):
rehearsing something in yourmind, you're holding on to some
information, the longer you haveto do that, the more likely you
are to forget it.
Jane (17:43):
We were talking earlier about how important sleep is to
memory, but Claire is wondering,
Claire (17:50):
Why do we not remember things we say in the middle of
the night when we say we want toremember them in the morning?
Jane (17:57):
And is it the same thing if, let's say you fall asleep in
the car, and your adult wakesyou up to go to your bed, and
you say something, and then thenext morning, they say, do you
remember that silly thing yousaid when I was carrying you
back to your bed? And you'relike, No, I don't remember that!
Same type of thing?
Nick Turke-Brown (18:14):
Yeah, it's probably similar. If you're less
awake, it's very hard to payattention when you're dozing
off. So it might be you're alsojust not storing memories very
well at that point.
Jane (18:23):
It's fascinating to think about how our brains are hard at
work while we're both awake andwhile we're asleep, even though
we're not necessarily aware ofall that work our brains are
doing to consolidate, store,retrieve and even remove
memories. After the break (18:37):
why are some people forgetful, and
do elephants really neverforget?
BREAK (18:44):
BREAK
Jane (18:47):
This is But Why! I'm Jane Lindholm, and today we're
learning about how our brainsremember things with Professor
Nick Turke-Brown of YaleUniversity.
Ava (18:57):
Hello. My name is Ava. I'm nine years old. I'm from
Peterborough, England. Why aresome people forgetful?
Nick Turke-Brown (19:05):
Yeah, you know, some people have better
memories. Some people have worsememories. Even within what you
would expect of healthy youknow, typical kids and adults,
there are people who are moreforgetful than others. There's
even people who have reallyamazing memories, you know,
better memories than everybodyelse in general. But all of this
(19:29):
is pretty normal, like evenpeople who you would think of as
forgetful, are still healthy andremember what they need to
remember to do well. There arepeople who have worse memories
because of medical conditions,like if they have something
called mild cognitive impairmentor dementia, or you might have
(19:51):
heard of Alzheimer's disease.These are medical conditions
that make memory much worse,where you forget loved ones,
even. But within the healthykind of typically developing
population, there's variation,but it's all pretty normal and
to be expected. And again,remembering more is not always
better. What you would want toremember is the important
(20:14):
things, not everything.
Tyce (20:15):
Hi, I'm Tice. I am nine years old. I live in Bluffdale,
Utah. Why do we forget things?And what does our brain do with
the things we forget?
Nick Turke-Brown (20:27):
Well, there's lots of different reasons you
can forget. Like, the memoriescan be sort of erased. How
memories are stored in the brainis through cells in the brain
called neurons. These are likecells in the rest of your body,
but neurons are cells in yourbrain, and they they connect
with one another. They toucheach other. And how they connect
(20:50):
with one another is how memoriesare stored. Those are called
synapses. Those are how twocells talk to each other, and
the pattern of how cells areconnected to each other is how
memories are stored. This isdifferent from our computer
stores, you know, a file or aphoto, but our brains store
memory is that way. And so ifyou lose those connections,
either the cells themselves die,sometimes over time, or you lose
(21:14):
some of the connections breakdown, or the brain region grows
or changes in its composition,those memories can essentially
get get erased so that they'regone. That's one kind of change
that happens in the brain. Thatwas one of the theories of
infantile amnesia that we weretalking about before, is that as
you get older, and that sort ofthree to four year old range,
(21:36):
you have a lot of new cells inyour parts your brain that store
memories, and they might beoverwriting memories that you
already have in there. That'scalled neurogenesis, like the
birth of new neurons. So that'sone kind of erasing.
Another kind of forgetting thathappens in the brain is when
there's a disconnect between howthe memory is stored and then
(21:56):
how you access it. So you mighthave some cells that are
connected in the brain throughsynapses in a certain way that
stores a memory. But if, whenyou see a familiar person or you
go to a familiar place, itdoesn't get matched to that
memory, you're not going to beable to call it to mind and
retrieve it and remember thatearlier experience. So it's not
(22:17):
that the memory itself is gone,it's that you can't get it. It's
like if you have a book and youcan't find your book, right, you
know you have the book you mightlook on your bookshelf and you
just can't find it. So you can'tread what's inside it. It's that
kind of an issue. The book stillexists. It's just under your bed
or somewhere else. You justcan't get to it. And so that's
(22:37):
another reason why we forget achange that happens in the brain
is that the cues, the things inthe world that remind us of
things, just don't map onto orcan't be used to access the
memory. And for example, whenyou meet somebody you know at
the park or at school, you don'tjust remember that person's face
(22:59):
or their name. You link thatperson to the place that they're
in. So you remember that you metthis kid on the playground, and
if you see that same friend atthe grocery store, you might not
even recognize them, becausethat's not where you saw them
the first time. So memories arestored in what's called a
context, in a place, in asituation. And so a lot of
(23:22):
forgetting occurs because we'renot in the right context. You go
to the grocery store, you're notexpecting to see a friend that
you just met on the playground,and so it's harder to recognize
them. And so a lot of forgettinghappens when we're just not in
the right mindset in order toaccess a memory.
Jane (23:39):
We have just a couple more questions. One is from Poppy,
who wonders...
Poppy (23:43):
Why, when you bump your head hard on something hard, you
lose your memory?
Nick Turke-Brown (23:49):
Yeah. Hopefully Poppy's not bumping
their head a lot like this,because it's, it's usually not a
great sign if you have anaccident, or you fall off your
bike, or you fall down on theplayground and you bump your
head and you can't remembersomething, you definitely should
tell a parent or and maybe gosee a doctor. That can be a sign
(24:13):
of a concussion or sometimescalled a traumatic brain injury,
TBI. So that's not a commonthing, hopefully, to bump your
head in a way that would makeyou forget. But it is the case
that when people get inaccidents like a car accident or
a bicycle accident, or fall on aplayground, that can cause
(24:36):
either temporary or longerlasting damage to the brain. It
could be that in the moment, youknow you're playing with your
friends, and you fall and thenyou can't remember what you were
just doing a moment ago. Thatcould be because you maybe you
lose consciousness, or maybeyou're in a lot of pain, and you
sort of forget what you weredoing. So that that would be a
(24:58):
less scary version of this. Butif you had a more significant
accident that caused braindamage, that can cause damage to
parts of your brain that arereally important for memory, and
so it's not unusual in cases ofbad accidents like that, to
damage some of the parts of thebrain that are important for
memory, or some of theconnections in the brain that
(25:18):
help you to take a memory andthen act on it. So I would think
of that as, hopefully, a rareevent, but it is a real
consequence of accidents thatpeople have problems with
memory.
Annika (25:29):
My name is Annika, and I'm five years old, and I live
in Chicago, Illinois. How dogrownups remember everything?
Nick Turke-Brown (25:40):
Well, the good news for Annika is that grown
ups do not remember everything.
Jane (25:46):
I can say that's true.
Nick Turke-Brown (25:47):
I can say that as a grown up, but it sometimes
feels like that when you'retalking with your parents,
they're like, know it alls orhave all the they have all the
answers when you ask them aquestion.
Jane (25:57):
Or they remember, I told you to clean your room
yesterday.
Nick Turke-Brown (26:00):
They remember some deal they made with you.
But the answer is that grown upsdon't remember everything.
Adults and kids, we store somememories, but not everything. It
is also the case so that adultshave more experiences. So if you
think of what we were talkingabout before as memory being
about, you have some experience,you're doing something, and your
(26:22):
brain is plastic. It's like PlayDoh, it's being molded based on
your experience. Adults justhave more of that. You know,
they've gone through school,they might have a job, they have
a family, they have some skills,they have a lot of
responsibilities. So they'vegained knowledge over time, and
they can use that knowledge toanswer questions or even to
(26:44):
store memories better. The moreyou know about the world, the
easier it is to store memories,because you're taking things you
already know and recombiningthem in new ways. So it is the
case that adults have moreknowledge. That's a kind of
memory. It's often calledsemantic memory, memory for
facts or details. That issomething that increases over
your lifespan as you have moreand more experiences, as you
(27:06):
spend longer in school, and asyou you know, learn new things.
So adults do have more of that,but I wouldn't say that they
remember all of the events orexperiences that they've had in
life any better than than anolder child would.
Eva (27:19):
My name is Eva. I am eight years old. I live in Dayton,
Ohio, and my question is, how doelephants remember everything?
Nick Turke-Brown (27:27):
Yeah, it's really interesting. You know,
elephants have good socialmemories for other elephants.
They have good memories fornavigation routes. So they kind
of move a lot through theirthrough their environment, and
they can remember differentlocations in their environment
well. They have an interestingsocial group dynamics, and so
they remember about how otherelephants are behaving. And so
(27:50):
they do have good memories, butI don't think they're
exceptional. Most large animalsand even a lot of small animals
have great memories. It's reallyimportant to survive in the
natural world, to learn fromtrial and error, to learn from
(28:11):
experience, to learn what's safeand what's not safe, or who's
kind and who's unkind. Evolutionhas endowed our brains with the
ability to store memories, andthat's true of almost all
species. In animals likemammals, we have brains that are
(28:33):
really evolved, that havecertain parts of the brain, like
a region called the hippocampus.It's like a hippopotamus, but
hippo-campus. And that brainregion is in mice, in elephants,
in humans, and it storesmemories in all of those
animals. So animals vary a lotin what kinds of things they
(28:53):
remember. You know, mice mightremember how things smell. Dogs
might remember how things smellbetter than humans. Elephants
might remember largeenvironments better because they
move a lot. So there aredifferent kinds of knowledge or
memories that different animalsneed in order to survive and
thrive in their niche, andhumans have that too. So
(29:14):
elephants, there's kind of thesense that elephants have great
memories. They do have largebrains. They do have some of
these brain structures that arereally important for memory are
large in elephants, and so theyprobably do have great memories,
but so do so do sea lions, so dohumans, so do mice, and without
that, we wouldn't be able tolearn from our mistakes. We
(29:34):
wouldn't be able to makepredictions about what's going
to happen in a new scenario. Wewouldn't be able to build
relationships with other animalsor humans. So memory is really
the core of who we are, andwithout memory, you lose a bit
of your own identity, your ownpersonality.
Jane (29:51):
And don't forget your brain is storing memories all
the time, not just when you'retrying really hard to memorize
something. That includes rightnow. What do you think you're
going to remember from thisepisode? Thanks to Dr Nick
Turke-Brown of Yale Universityfor helping us understand how we
remember and how we forgetthings. He has his own lab where
(30:12):
he studies memory. As always, ifyou have a question about
anything, have an adult record,you asking it on a smartphone
using an app like Voice Memos.Then have your adult email the
file toquestions@butwhykids.org. But
Why is produced by Sarah Baik,Melody Bodette and me, Jane
(30:32):
Lindholm, at Vermont Public anddistributed by PRX. Our video
producer is Joey Palumbo, andour theme music is by Luke
Reynolds, if you like our show,please have your adults help you
give us a thumbs up or a reviewon whatever podcast platform you
use to listen to us, it helpsother kids and families find us.
We'll be back in two weeks withan all new episode. Until then,
(30:57):
stay curious!
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!