记忆力 Charan Ranganath

记忆为什么重要？ 记忆的重要性，可能并不在于人们通常认为的原因。我们总认为，当我们记不住东西时，记忆才显得重要。那时我们会为此感到沮丧，会说，为什么我记不住这个人的名字？为什么我想不起那个演过那个什么戏的家伙叫什么？记忆之所以非常重要，是因为它对于帮助我们理解当下、我们所处的空间、我们所处的时间，都至关重要。

◉ 记忆的重要性在于帮助我们理解现在、定位自身以及规划未来，而非仅仅是记住过去。

并且能够规划和想象可能的未来。所以，如果你观察那些有记忆障碍的人，他们生活中的问题并非仅仅是记不起过去本身。 问题在于，他们无法记住过去，导致他们很难记得自己最近是否吃过饭，或者他们会一遍又一遍地重复自己的话，或者他们对未来要做什么没有太多远见。他们存在所有这些缺陷，使他们无法独立生活，这并非因为他们无法告诉你一小时前发生了什么之类的事情。而是因为这种无能导致他们几乎无法完成健康人在社会中日常所做的任何事情。你刚才提到了一个点。你有一个体验事物的自我，还有一个记住你体验事物的自我。这两个自我之间有什么关系、区别和张力呢？ 我们从记忆研究中得知的一件事是，我们经历的绝大多数事情都会被遗忘。所以，如果你的听众告诉别人，嘿，我在这期播客上听了一个很棒的采访，采访者状态极佳，然后他们向朋友描述。

◉ 我们的大部分经历都会被遗忘，记忆只保留了经历中很小一部分信息，而我们正是基于这部分不完整的信息来做决定，这造成了“体验自我”和“记忆自我”之间的差异。

如果他们花10分钟描述我们正在进行的这个长篇对话，从记忆的角度来说，那将是一个巨大的成功。没有人能一字不差地复述我们说的每一个字。我们谈论的许多重点，人们可能也会忘记。所以事情是这样的。现在我想为我的生活做一个决定。现在我想决定是否去度假。 我该怎么做？我会回想我过去所有的假期，我去过哪里，以及我是否喜欢它们。 如果我这样做，我依赖的将不是我的经历，而是记忆，而记忆要不完整得多。它只是我们实际经历的一小部分。因此，诺贝尔奖得主、心理学家丹尼·卡尼曼提出了这样一个观点：我们有一个体验自我，它经历了我们所做的一切，但是记忆自我只能接触到那信息中极小的一部分。而这正是我们决定“我现在快乐吗？我将来想做什么？ 我在哪里？”等等的基础。我们确实处于这样一种境地：我们大部分的决定都是基于记忆自我做出的。这几乎就像是两个不同的人，因为体验自我是活在当下的，而记忆自我是活在过去的。这有点像如果你是电视剧《人生切割术》的粉丝，有点像那样。这似乎向我暗示如果记忆自我能够记住体验自我所经历的一切，那将给我们一个更全面的图景。也许我们就能从一个更深入、更丰富的数据集中进行选择，从而做出关于度假或其他任何事情的决定。哦，我们曾经和某人谈过去图卢姆的事，但我忘了那次谈话。我们去了图卢姆，结果图卢姆很糟糕，或者很棒，诸如此类。 是的，这是个很好的问题。卡尼曼觉得，我们没有能力接触体验自我，这实际上是相当不理性的。记住，对我来说，情况恰恰相反。 如果你和那些拥有所谓“超常自传体记忆”的人交谈，这些人拥有着他们所经历过的不可思议的信息数据库。他们可以告诉你七年前某个特定日期的早餐是什么，天气如何，那天谁赢了体育比赛。难以置信。如果你阅读相关描述，许多这些人把这形容为一种折磨。

◉ 我们拥有不完整的记忆其实是件好事，因为我们记住的往往是我们需要记住的，这就像我们打包行李一样，只带走必要的物品。

他们说这是他们不会希望发生在最痛恨的敌人身上的事。我的意思是，他们常常被记忆所困扰。往好了说，是些无关紧要的东西。往坏了说，是些微不足道且负面的事情，但它们却一再地回到他们脑海中。所以我喜欢这样想：我们幸而拥有这种不完整的记忆，因为我们记住的往往是我们所需要的。打个比方，想象你正在旅行，既然我们处于度假模式。想象你正在旅行，你会打包行李箱。那么，你会把你所有的东西都打包进去吗？

可能不会。也许你是个极简主义者，但我们大多数人都不会。那么，当你决定打包什么时，你在想什么？你如何选择？可能会想想过去类似的旅行，可能会想象这次旅行会是什么样子，并试图找出可能需要的东西。 没错。所以你会计算出你认为这次旅行需要什么。你只会带上你认为需要的东西。有时候你会带上一些结果用不上的东西。有时候你会打包一些东西，结果却发现少了点什么。你忘了那件你急需的夹克。然后你会因为没有把所有东西都打包而自责。 但关键在于，平均而言，只打包你需要的东西，你做得相当不错。记忆就是这样运作的。这有点像记忆与我们人生旅程的类比。我们的大脑通过数千年的进化，试图找出什么是我们应该携带的最佳信息？什么是我们将来需要的信息？是每次对话的每个字吗？还是那些在某种程度上很重要的东西？ 我们关注过的东西，那些令人惊讶或新奇的东西，那些因为有益或因为是某种我们想在以后记住的可怕威胁而让我们情绪激动的东西。如果你回顾你生命中的记忆，那些往往是我们更容易记住的事情。 稍微谈谈那些记忆超群的人，他们的大脑内部发生了什么？他们的大脑在结构上、功能上有什么不同吗？我们知道这是为什么吗？

◉ 我们对记忆个体差异的了解仍然有限，即使是记忆力超群的人，他们的日常生活也和普通人无异。

是的，我们对记忆整体上的这些个体差异知之甚少，这有点令人惊讶。有一些迹象表明存在一些差异。我相信是在大脑中一个叫做纹状体的区域。但你知道吗，在阅读那项研究时，让我惊讶的是这些差异实际上是多么细微和微小。 它们并没有那么大。你可以观察那些自传体记忆严重缺陷的人，你问他们昨天做了什么，他们会给你一个非常简短的答案，几乎记不住任何细节。他们告诉你的听起来像是在读书，而不是他们实际经历过的事情。 然而，在现实生活中，那些记忆超群的人和记忆严重缺陷的人，他们的功能水平是相同的。并非记忆超群的人就无所不能，他们也没有因此变得富有和出名。是的，你可以找到一些富有且出名的记忆超群者，但大多数情况下，他们的日常生活和普通人一样。他们并没有在学校表现更好，也没有经历过什么别人无法经历的惊人体验。所以，我们对他们大脑的不同之处了解不够，但在我看来，这纯粹是个人观点，这可能与人们如何看待自己感兴趣的事物以及他们构建知识的方式有关。例如，有很多关于勒布朗·詹姆斯的数据，或者说不是所有数据，而是所有这些视频，我在我的书中提到了他。

◉ 卓越的记忆力可能与个人的专业知识和对信息的处理方式有关，例如勒布朗·詹姆斯对篮球比赛的记忆力超群，这与其多年的篮球经验和对比赛的深入理解有关。

我还就此接受了NBA的采访。基本上，勒布朗对篮球比赛有着非凡的记忆力。他可以谈论很久以前他打过的一场比赛，并描述比赛中的战术。这些战术可以与视频逐点同步，与他所说的完全一致。我的意思是，这简直是……你想想看，这些信息在他面前闪过得多快，要从中构建出某种详细的记忆是多么困难。但是这家伙研究和打了这么久的比赛。那些看起来令人难以置信的混乱场面，人们以超高速奔跑，所有这些事情都在发生，他却能够抓住它们，并把它们放在一个小隔间里，因为他基本上以前就见过。所以他甚至没有看现在发生的事情。他在看30秒后、一分钟后会发生什么。 他关注球的走向，并预判三步之后的打法。正是这种专业知识赋予了他非凡的细节记忆能力。在这种情况下，这并非指记住更多，即随随便便记住所有事情。而是指更好地记住，能够抓住模式、你需要的信息，并能尽快将其提取出来。 好吧，假设我们现在谈论的是一个普通人，不是一个从不记忆的人，也不是一个什么都记得的人。人类的记忆通常是如何在我们大脑中运作的？

◉ 人类记忆的工作方式是自发的，我们的大脑会在遇到新奇或重要的事情时形成详细的记忆片段，然后我们再将这些片段重建成故事。

哦，这是个非常非常大的问题。我认为人类记忆的运作方式，通常是自发的，也就是说，在我们目前正在进行的研究中，以及在我们最近的一些研究中，我们发现我们并非总是在编码丰富的记忆，因为世界的大部分是高度可预测的。 事实上，看起来我们的大脑似乎真的在那些我们因为某些新奇或令人惊讶的事情而略感困惑的时刻，或者在那些对我们来说在动机上非常重要的时刻，比如我们刚刚达成了某种目标，形成这些详细的快照式记忆。所以这些时刻就像我们拥有的快照。然后，它们常常会自发地浮现在我们的脑海中。比如，你听到一首很久没听过的歌，或者你回到一个你从小就没去过的地方，突然间这些记忆就涌上心头了，但发生的情况是，你得到这些零碎的片段，然后你把它们重建成一个故事。 因此，关于那部分，至关重要的是，当我们记忆时，我们从来都不是在真正地重放过去。我们是在想象过去可能是怎样的。就像考古学家根据他们挖到的一些陶器碎片来想象一个古老文明可能是怎样的。 这很有趣。那么，为什么我们对某些事件记忆犹新，而对另一些事件则记忆模糊或完全不记得呢？是什么预示着某件事会进入记忆？

◉ 决定我们是否记住某件事的因素有很多，包括意义、错误、独特性、重要性和情境（MEDIC）。

有很多因素。在长时间谈论记忆之后，我为此想出了一个首字母缩略词，花了我很长时间才意识到我可以想出一个助记符来帮助我记住这些东西，那就是MEDIC。它代表意义（Meaning）、错误（Error）、以及……让我想想，是意义、错误，现在我正努力回忆所有内容。你必须记住这个助记符。独特性，对了。意义、错误、独特性、重要性和情境。它确实让我想起来了，助记符。就是它。那么，我们来逐个看看。意义，就像我在勒布朗·詹姆斯的例子中告诉你的那样。当你对某事物拥有一定的知识体系时，就很容易记住新的信息。 基于你已经知道的。例如，如果你是足球迷，我会说欧洲足球或者其他什么，美国以外的每个人都会称之为足球。那么现在我给你一个假设的、根本不存在的球员。我给你他们表现的统计数据。我说，这是你需要知道的关于这个球员擅长什么、什么的所有统计数据。 他们过去做了什么等等。如果你是足球专家，即使这只是一堆我刚编造的随机数字，一个我编造的人名，你也能立即抓住这些信息。 因为你的头脑中有一个结构可以锁定这些信息。因此，意义是通过将你试图学习的东西与你已经知道的东西联系起来，从而锁定新信息的一种非常好的方式。很多助记方法都是这样运作的。

我还提到了错误，这有点反直觉。我通常喜欢最后谈论这个，但它是MEDIC中的第二个字母。所以错误基本上是指，我们越努力地试图唤起一段记忆，并且如果我们得到了正确的反馈，那么发生的情况是，它给了我们大脑一个机会来稳定记忆并修复可能发生的问题。比如说你记住了我的名字怎么发音，然后过了一会儿，一小时后，你问自己，好吧，我刚才怎么念他的名字来着？让我试试。然后你就说出来了。然后你回放你实际说的话，顺便说一句，你说得很完美。你会发现你听到了，然后你的大脑会想，等等，我犯了个小错误。和我之前说的不太一样。让我修正一下那个记忆。我们可以在大脑的活动中看到这一点。我们已经证明，当你实际尝试检索信息然后修复这些记忆时，海马体等区域会出现活动，而不是只是试着去记忆，只是看着。这就是为什么如果你自己开车，你会比坐在优步里更好地记住一个地方的布局，因为你在积极地尝试为记忆生成东西，然后发现，哦，等等，我错了。而那些错误让大脑能够建立一个更详细的，可以说是地图。 所以错误是一个因素。你越挣扎，效果越好。信息会牢牢记住，你以后也能保留它。如果你不给自己挣扎的机会，比如你只是照本宣科地念台词而不凭记忆排练，你就永远无法记住并很好地保留它。这是另一个例子。 现在还有独特性。独特性意味着我们的记忆基本上是相互竞争的。这有点反直觉。你可能认为记忆就像你的手机，你存储照片，每张照片都是相互独立的。 但大脑不是这样运作的。这就是为什么我们不像手机那样耗尽容量，因为我们使用相同的神经元来编码多个记忆。因此，发生的情况是，有一种活动模式与我对你的记忆独特相关，另一种活动模式与我认识的其他人独特相关。 现在，如果你长得像我认识的人，那些记忆对我来说就会混淆。但如果有什么办法我可以注意到让你区别于我见过的任何其他人的特征。现在我就会有一个独特的记忆。所以我的大脑在试图调取关于你的记忆时，就不会那么困难，因为你相对于所有其他人的面孔来说很突出。这种情况，例如，当人们去某个地方或在音乐会上拍照并在Instagram上发布时就会出现，他们会拍视频。 你会发现，这样做的人对这些经历的记忆，实际上比那些只是试图沉浸在经历中的人要差。原因在于，当你漫不经心地拍照时，你并没有真正沉浸在那些能给你留下独特记忆的细节中。你只是有点像四处游荡，试图尽可能多地获取信息，而我们失去的是对那段经历的记忆，我们从中得到的只是一个我们大多数人再也不会回去看的录像。 所以独特性非常重要。现在，你可以用相机说，我要用这台相机拍一张与这个地方或这个时刻如此独特相关的东西，以至于我无法忘记它。这就是你把相机当作一种赋予你独特记忆的方式，而不是剥夺你的记忆。 我们现在已经讲了M、E和D， 所以I是重要的一点，即重要性。当我说重要性时，我不是指你从更高层次的自我角度认为重要的事情，而是指你的大脑基于进化认为重要的事情。所以，正如我之前提到的，重要的事情往往是那些在某种程度上具有情感唤起性或在某种程度上令人兴奋的事情。 身处新环境，感到惊讶，但也感到害怕。创伤是极其难忘的，无论我们是否希望如此。处于渴望状态的时刻，对我们来说也非常难忘。所以你可以观察这些状态，你会发现大脑中有些化学物质在这些状态下会大量释放，比如多巴胺、去甲肾上腺素、血清素、皮质醇。我相信你的许多听众都听说过其中一些。多巴胺，现在每个人都在谈论，例如，多巴胺的作用是让你兴奋起来。它实际上并不会给你带来愉悦感，但它确实能让你兴奋起来，并促进可塑性。可以说，它使这些记忆能够迅速巩固，从而在以后更具弹性。 所以重要性并不一定是我认为，我必须确保记住下周的医生预约。而是更接近于，哦，天哪，我当时在那个洞穴里，被熊袭击了。我想记住那次经历，我想记住我是怎么到那里的，以及将来如何避免这种情况。这才是我想说的。 所以重要性是一个很大的因素，这就是为什么我们经常记住这些情绪体验。最后一个，我知道我已经讲了很长时间了，但你想问。我确实想。所以另一个是情境。这就是我们在MEDIC中看到的。所以情境是这些事件发生的时间和地点。所以当我们记住事件或情景记忆时，这些记忆与某个时间和地点紧密相连。大脑中有一个叫做海马体的区域。我们知道海马体，如果它有任何归档方案的话，它是按照时间和地点来归档事物的。所以，这有点像，例如，如果你听到一首歌，而这首歌是你十几岁以后就没听过的，那么现在发生的情况是，它把你带回了那个时代，因为它是一个线索，唤起了那个时期的记忆。因此，那个时期现在与各种各样的记忆联系在一起，可能会让你想起，高中时和朋友们偷偷喝啤酒，或者让你想起那些你出去海滩的日子，或者其他什么。 这种体验我们称之为“心理时间旅行”，即一段记忆可以将你带回过去的某个情境、某个时间和地点。这些记忆可能看起来被遗忘了，但如果你处于正确的情境中，是可以被唤起的。 相反，如果你处于错误的情境中，情况会非常糟糕。举个简单的例子，你走进厨房，却想不起来自己为什么要去厨房。然后你走回你之前所在的房间。 然后它突然就出现在你的脑海里了。原因在于，我对我想做的事情的记忆，比如说，是在这个房间，也就是我的家庭办公室里。但是当我到达厨房时，我处于一个不同的情境中。我的思绪转换到了一个不同的地方。因此，这些房间之间的界限就像我们情境的转换，使得我们更难记住过去的事情。 这是最后一个。所有这些因素都将决定记忆的生死存亡。

在我看来，在你刚才解释的时候，我脑海里一直有这样一个想法，记忆有点像呼吸。呼吸是我们少数几个可以用来控制自主神经系统的窗口之一，你实际上是无意识地进行的。但也可以有意识地介入并进行一些调整。你可以稍微调整一下。在这个方面，这是否是一个恰当的比喻，即记忆正在发生，我们不一定能选择。然后我们也有这种程度的有意识的控制，控制当时有多少东西被放入记忆，我们又从中提取了多少，等等。 当然。事实上，我会更进一步说，我们既有很多潜在的记忆过程，但我们对记忆也有大量的控制权，尽管我们常常不使用它，或者至少我们常常没有正确地使用它。

◉ 记忆既有自动运行的机制，也有我们主动控制的空间，我们可以通过改变视角、与他人分享等方式来修改和更新记忆。

我的意思是，一方面，你有一些在幕后自动发生的过程，比如大脑在不断地自我调整以从经验中学习，这样你就能更快、更有效地处理事情。比如说，你正在学习中文。最初，这些汉字会很难读，但如果你一遍又一遍地读相同的汉字，你的大脑就会开始调整，这样你就能更快地处理这些信息。 很多这种情况的发生，我们甚至感觉不到大脑中正在发生的变化。它就那样发生了。现在，坏的方面是，你听到假新闻，而且是从10个不同的来源听到的。 突然之间，它开始变得更可信了。原因在于我们的大脑已经调整自己来处理这些信息。在这个过程中，它似乎更容易思考。如果它似乎更容易思考，我们通常会相信它是真的。这就是我在书中谈到的记忆的一些自动影响的例子。但我们也有大量的控制权。例如，有研究表明，当我们回忆一个事件时， 我们对用来组织那个事件的叙事有很大的控制权。有很多关于不同球队球迷的故事。他们观看同一场足球比赛。之后，你问他们对比赛的记忆，他们的记忆却截然不同，因为他们是从自己喜欢的球队的视角观看比赛的。 还有其他研究表明，你可以改变你的视角。你可以从不同的角度看待同一个事件，然后突然想起以前没有想起的事情。因此，我们在某种程度上可以控制这种叙事。当你谈论创伤之类的事情时，这一点非常重要。我曾经和患有创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）的退伍军人一起工作。 他们面临的一大挑战是，他们对自己的创伤感到非常羞耻，从不与任何人谈论。当这些病人加入一个团体，与其他经历过类似创伤的人交谈并分享他们的创伤时，你可以看到他们发生了巨大的转变。突然之间，他们意识到，他们并不孤单。 还有其他人也面临类似的情况。他们从这些有着完全不同视角的人那里获得支持。他们从那些不责备他们、不告诉他们感到内疚、不告诉他们是懦夫的人那里获得支持。突然之间，他们从一个完全不同的视角看待自己经历过的事情。现在发生的情况是，你在修改和更新那段记忆。 所以我们对记忆的使用方式有很大的自主权。我认为这很重要，因为人们常常觉得他们的记忆是，你知道的，对发生过的事情一成不变的记录。 事实上，它就像流沙一样，总是在变化。变化总是在发生。有时我们不知不觉地就做了，结果犯了很多错误，因为错误开始在我们的记忆中累积。但有时我们可以正确地去做，并且…… 有时我们可以利用它来为自己谋利。在我们继续之前，如果你的锻炼感觉平淡，恢复缓慢，或者你只是感觉不适，那可能不是你的训练计划或饮食的问题。可能是一些更乏味的事情，比如锌。虽然像东革阿里这样的大多数补充剂可以提供帮助，但锌在睾酮生成、力量、恢复和能量方面悄悄地发挥着巨大作用，而大多数人都长期缺乏锌。 这就是为什么我如此钟爱Momentus的锌，因为它能支持睾酮，增强活力，并帮助一切正常运转。此外，它还通过了NSF运动认证，这意味着它经过了独立测试和批准，具有纯度、安全性和零可疑成分的特点。只有清洁、有效、科学支持的优质产品。如果您仍然不确定，Momentus提供30天退款保证，因此您可以试用29天，如果您不喜欢，他们会退款给您。另外…… 他们提供国际运输服务。现在，通过下方描述中的链接或访问livemomentous.com/modernwisdom，并在结账时使用代码modernwisdom，您首次订阅即可享受35%的折扣，并享有30天退款保证。网址是L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.com/modernwisdom，结账时使用代码modernwisdom。我们为什么会忘记事情？这仅仅是我们大脑内部空间需求的问题吗？

◉ 遗忘的原因有两种：一是记忆从大脑中消失；二是找不到记忆。

有两种学派的观点，可能两者都是对的。一种是你忘记是因为一段记忆从大脑中消失了。神经元之间那些让你能够提取记忆的连接开始衰退并被清除，然后你就无法再接触到那段记忆，因为它已经消失了。 另一种学派的观点是，你找不到你正在寻找的记忆。但是如果你有正确的线索，你就能够提取出来。所以你试图记住那个演过那个什么的人的名字，但你想不起来。然后一个小时后，它突然就出现在你的脑海里了，但为时已晚。你的谈话已经结束了。所以在一种情况下，你处于错误的情境中。你无法提取出来。但现在在不同的情境中，你可以很容易地提取出来。所以我们有…… 这绝对是…… 毫无疑问，我们能够接触到更多的记忆。我们拥有的可以提取的记忆，比我们在任何特定时间实际能够提取的要多。所以有些遗忘仅仅是找不到。不过，确实有一些证据表明，并非所有东西都完全被覆盖了。基于生物学原理，我也完全相信这一点。所以两者兼而有之。但我认为 我们有时没有给自己足够的机会去寻找那些确实存在的记忆。我们怎样才能让自己忘记呢？这可能吗？如果有什么事情你觉得，我不想再把它记在脑子里了。我已经能够摆脱我卡片正面那个我拼命想记住了三年的16位密码了。有没有让自己忘记这种事？

◉ 我们可以主动让自己忘记一些事情，但这并非总是有效，有时我们只是需要合适的线索来回忆起被遗忘的记忆。

有的。关于它有多有效，存在争议。但我的一位好朋友迈克·安德森对所谓的“主动遗忘”做了大量研究，基本上就是你提示人们回忆某事，然后告诉那个人，压制它，不要去想它。 你会发现，人们在这方面做得越好，就越有可能主动忘记某些事情。现在，这些效果并不巨大，也不清楚。这是否会对你有所帮助。或许它能帮你忘记，嗯，一个临时密码之类的东西。如果它对那方面没有帮助，我会感到惊讶。嗯， 你知道，也许是一段创伤经历，不太可能，但谁知道呢，如果你做得足够多，也许它会让你忘记它。至少，我认为它会使提取那些记忆变得更加困难。我有这种感觉。我当然知道我自己也是这样，你知道，如果我回顾一次旅行，或者与朋友共度的一个夜晚，或者我看过的一集电视剧、一本书或其他什么，我， 我感觉自己回忆得不够。会有一种奇怪的负罪感。我想，那又有什么意义呢？如果只是时间的流逝，而我未来的自我无法利用任何记忆红利，以便我的记忆自我能够真正提取它，那么经历这一切又有什么意义呢？这种试图记住更多的尝试，这种…… 永无止境地希望自己能回忆起更多做过的事情，是否存在问题？是也不是。我的意思是，你所说的，我认为是那种你希望能够记住重要事情的时刻。所以我会说，记住得更好，而不是更多。 努力记住重要的事情。所以，如果你和家人、亲密的朋友或伴侣一起去度假，那些通常是我们喜欢记住的事情。我的意思是，在某种程度上，度假是对记忆的一种投资，对吧？另一方面，有很多…… 我们忘记了，你可以回头问自己，十年后，我未来的自己会在乎我忘了这件事吗？不。好吧。所以没那么重要。而且我认为，如果你回顾那些你没有记住的事情的例子，也许你只是需要正确的提醒。也许你需要从精神上回到那里，因为有时候发生的情况是，你 当你度假时，你的心境完全不同。你身处不同的地方。然后你回到家， 你失去了那一部分的自己，因为当你在不同的情境中时，可以说，你是另一个人。所以我想到了这一点，夏威夷是我的快乐之地。当我在夏威夷时，我可以进入一种我在日常工作中无法进入的状态。所以有时候，问题在于你回到那里，你身处潮湿的环境中，闻着热带花卉的香味， 鸟儿在鸣叫，然后，你突然想起了所有你以前记不起来的事情。所以也许这就是你想要做到的，尝试唤回一些那些记忆，无论是通过照片，还是，你知道，在度假的每一天结束时。如果你只是花点时间反思，试着只记住一天中一件…… 积极的事情，对吧？你会发现，一件积极的事情会浮现在脑海，然后那会让你想起另一件积极的事情。突然之间，你就回忆起了所有那些经历。而回忆那些经历的行为，会让你以后更容易想起那些经历，这样你就能以更丰富的方式将它们融入你的记忆自我中。 记忆训练的基本要素是什么？我们已经谈到环境如何提示我们的大脑告诉我们想要记住的事情。这就是你在不思考呼吸时如何呼吸以及为什么呼吸的原因。但如果我开始思考呼吸并且想要更好地呼吸，人们应该如何思考训练他们的记忆？如果他们想在经历发生时记住它，他们应该怎么做？这方面的基本要素是什么？

◉ 记忆训练的关键在于关注细节，避免干扰因素，并设定想要记住的目标。

好的，所以有不同的事情。很多人谈论记忆训练时，就像记忆运动员或其他什么人，他们试图记住比如圆周率的第一千位数字。而那些东西对于记住你想要尽可能清晰地保存在脑海中的这个时刻，并不会特别有帮助。我想说的是，对于以一种能让你…… 回到那个时刻的方式来记忆，最有帮助的是感官细节，无论它们是什么。现在，有些人不太擅长以某些方式记住感官细节。有些人患有所谓的“心盲症”，例如，他们无法在脑海中形成视觉图像。但只要你能沉浸在任何使这个时刻独特的事物中，你…… 那会让你更容易记住它，因为它会很独特。MEDIC中的D，也就是独特性，它会给你一个非常独特和具体的情境，MEDIC中的C。所以基本上，我们可以通过控制，管理我们的，你知道，基本上就是防止我们自己 sabotaging ourselves，在很大程度上做到这一点。所以，你知道，有些东西就是记忆的障碍，比如压力、疲劳、 嗯，疾病、抑郁、多任务处理，多任务处理可能是现代社会的主要弊病。嗯，你知道，如果你想记住这一刻，就不要一直看你的手机。不要一直，不要，呃，关掉，你知道，把你的，呃，手表调到免打扰模式，因为你越想做这些事情，即使只是想想， 就足以分散你的注意力，让你脱离那个你以后想记住的时刻。好吧，所以避免做那些妨碍你回忆事情的事情是一个好的开始。是的。另一件事就是首先设定你想要从中获得什么的目标。所以， 而且，我认为这与呼吸是一个很好的类比。因为我认为很多人认为这应该是自然的，应该是，我们应该免费得到一切。但这并非真正的运作方式。所以，如果你知道你的记忆将是不完整的，首先问问自己，你想从这次经历中带走什么。 因为专注于你一开始就想带走的信息，要比你没有专注于那些信息，而之后再试图提取它们容易得多。现在，我知道这听起来有点像， 在某些方面很明显，但我们多久会真正问自己，我想从这次经历中带走什么样的记忆？我敢打赌几乎从来没有。我做得远没有我应该做的那么多。尽管在写书之前，我现在比以前更善待我的记忆自我了。是的，那很有趣。好吧，那么，错误驱动学习，这是你之前提到过的一点。是的。给我解释一下。

◉ 错误驱动的学习是指，当我们试图回忆某件事时，大脑会尝试重建记忆，如果出现错误，我们会得到反馈并修正记忆，从而使记忆更加准确。

这有点反直觉，但基本上当我们的​​大脑形成记忆时，它们有点不完整。而且正如我所说，它们与情境密切相关。 所以问题可能在于，当你试图记住某些事情时，比如说你试图记住，比如说你试图学习一门新语言，对吧？然后你试图记住你学过的单词，并在度假时在对话中使用它们。那么，如果你想这样做，你希望能够在各种不同的情境中都能提取出来。 所以我们在记忆的计算机模型中发现的一件事是，当人们试图提取这些记忆时，大脑并不会完美地重建你提取的内容。 但是，如果你得到了正确的答案，并且它就在你面前，那么大脑就可以调整记忆。它可以以一种方式更新它，这样以后就能更好地提取这些信息。所以想象一下，也许我再给你举个例子。比如我正在努力记住你的名字。现在我离开了，我完成了这个播客，我试着想象你并回忆起你的名字。 然后我真的看了我们对话的视频，然后我想，哦，是的，那是克里斯。我记得他的脸和一切。对。现在我的大脑调整了我的记忆，这样我就对你以后是谁有了一个更准确、更独特的记忆。但它也来自一个不同的——它现在已经与一个不同的情境相关联了。 所以，我们越多地在不同的时间和地点唤起这段记忆，它就会越有韧性，也就越不会依赖于某个单一的线索。对吗？这说得通吗？是的，是的，是的，是的。 但另一方面，如果我们一开始就不给自己机会去提取记忆，比如我们只是试着一遍又一遍地对自己说你的名字，那不会很有用，因为我并没有真正给我的大脑机会去提取它那糟糕的记忆。我只是在努力一遍又一遍地读这个词，但我总是有正确的答案。所以我一开始就没有依赖记忆。所以，你知道，你想象…… 你正在努力学习如何打篮球。显然，你最好的选择是真正地投篮，而不是去想它。而且，你不可能每次都投进。你不可能一直都投进。 但正是通过这种挣扎，你的大脑才能调整并说，我有一个关于我应该做什么的模型，但它是错误的。所以我需要修复它。这就是我们所说的错误驱动学习。我们可以看到这一点。这实际上，如果你看看像ChatGPT这样的人工智能模型，它们之所以能工作，就是因为这个错误驱动学习的原则，模型试图预测，比如说，下一个会出现的词。 如果它弄错了，那么它只会调整模型中需要的连接，这样你以后就可以再次提取那个词。所以它是在学习，而不是试图记住所有东西，而是学习它需要做什么来纠正错误。这就是为什么驱动学习至关重要的原因。这是否意味着我们从痛苦和学习中…… 艰难的生活环境比愉快的环境更能让我们学到东西？我们是否，我们的记忆中也存在消极偏见，就像我们注意到我们的网状激活系统一样？ 嗯，我想说的是，我所说的痛苦是指努力记住某事的痛苦。所以，如果我们采取一种策略，即认为记忆应该是困难的，学习应该是困难的，而不是学习应该是容易的，我应该一直轻松拿到A，那么它就不那么痛苦了。它只是过程的一部分。就像你学习打网球一样，你只是因为喜欢才去做。 因此，我们越能让人们从把记忆看作一种缺陷，转变为把记忆和学习看作一种好奇心的旅程，那么它就不再痛苦了。这有点像学习的整个过程，对吧？这和你提出的关于消极偏见的观点是分开的，但也许我们可以…… 我让你对此做出回应。不，不，不。你说得很对。继续。好的。所以与此分开的是这种消极偏见。这是我认为人们没有意识到的另一件事，那就是我们对过去的记忆，会受到我们现在周围发生的事情的极大影响。我的意思是，如果我感觉不好， 我会倾向于回忆起负面的记忆。无论我回忆起什么记忆，我都会以一种消极的方式重构它们。 现在，如果我持有积极的，如果我处于积极的心态，我就会表现出相反的偏见，我将能够提取更积极的记忆，并以更积极的方式重构它们。所以你往往会看到这两种偏见。事实上，奇怪的是，随着人们年龄的增长，他们的记忆中往往会表现出更多的积极偏见，不管是什么原因。当然，这只是平均而言，但每个人都有…… 起起落落，对吧？那会影响她的记忆。举个例子，比如说你，你知道，我有个前女友在交往，然后，你知道，她甩了我几个月。我一直在回忆所有这些糟糕的事情，要么是我可能做过的导致分手的事情，要么是她做过的让我觉得她是个非常糟糕的人的事情。 后来，我遇到了我梦寐以求的女人，最终和她结了婚。那只是六个月之后的事情。现在我可以从一个完全不同的角度回顾我第一段恋情的记忆，它既不好也不坏。就好像，如果说有什么的话，我躲过了一劫。现在我可以回顾那些积极的经历，我从那段关系中得到的，以及消极的经历。所以这就是我的意思，那就是…… 我们目前的信念以及我们的情绪状态会影响我们如何重构事物。 在那些试验中，AG1 NextGen 临床证明可以填补常见的营养缺口，在三个月内改善营养水平，并且即使在健康成年人中也能将健康肠道细菌增加10倍。基本上，他们升级了配方，使用了更好的益生菌，生物利用度更高的营养素，并进行了临床验证，而且它仍然通过了NSF运动认证，所以你知道质量是可靠的。 他们真心关爱整体健康，这就是为什么我让我妈妈、我爸爸以及很多朋友都服用它。这也是为什么我每天都把它摄入体内。如果我找到了更好的东西，我会换掉它，但我还没有找到，所以还在用它。最棒的是，有90天退款保证。所以你可以购买并每天试用三个月。如果你不喜欢，他们会全额退款。对吧？ 现在，通过下方描述中的链接或访问drinkag1.com/modernwisdom，即可免费获得一年份的维生素D3K2和五份AG1旅行装。网址是drinkag1.com/modernwisdom。哦，那太有趣了。所以这一定会为那些生活顺利或生活不顺的人，为那些抑郁或快乐的人，创造一种…… 对于生活顺利或不顺利的人，对于抑郁或快乐的人来说，这是一种循环，因为你当前的状态…… 创造了一个情境，而这个情境使你的大脑倾向于看待、解释、回忆和关注与你当前作为体验自我的状态相符的过去经历。所以悲伤的人会想到更多悲伤的事情，而快乐的人会想到更多快乐的事情。这个评估公平吗？是的。这就是为什么抑郁症是一个如此恶性的循环。 因为当你抑郁时，你倾向于反复思考。反复思考几乎就是定义上在不断回想负面记忆。 这会强化你当下的感受，对吧？所以现在你回忆起更多负面记忆。会发生什么？你感觉更糟。你感觉越糟，就越容易回忆起负面记忆。但更重要的是，你感觉越糟，就越难提取出与你当时世界观相悖的记忆。 我们认知疗法的一个非常重要的部分，就是让人们克服这些偏见，通过实际提取与他们当时对世界的感知相矛盾的记忆。 因为很容易陷入这样的陷阱：心情不好，然后以最糟糕的方式重构过去，再用它来证实你对当下发生的事情的看法。所以，我们确实有能力摆脱困境，至少不一定是在临床抑郁症的情况下。但我认为，当你不顺心的时候， 如果你没有临床抑郁症，摆脱困境要容易得多。 在一天结束时，强迫自己记住一件积极的事情，无论多么微不足道。我做过，我没有坚持做事的纪律，但当我这样做的时候，会花我一些时间，然后我会想起一些愚蠢的事情，比如，哦，那个，呃，我午餐做了一个好三明治之类的。我喜欢那个三明治。然后突然间，呃， 我接触到更多东西。它改变了我的感受。而感受的改变让我更容易回忆起其他记忆，让我觉得也许今天并没有那么糟糕。太有趣了，伙计。你知道，今年我花了很多时间努力钻研神经生物学。里克·汉森，如果你熟悉《硬连线幸福》的里克，我觉得他太棒了。你知道，他有一种独特的交叉学科背景， 佛法、佛教正念之类的东西，然后是神经科学背后那些硬核科学的东西，也包括你的工作。我越发意识到，我们拥有一个通往我们大脑结构的迷人窗口，而且你确实对它有一定的有意识控制，尽管你无法预测下一个会突然冒出来的想法，但你确实对它有一定的有意识控制。嗯，但是…… 不像去健身房，你看不出自己是否真的在做。你不太能…… 完全判断你是否正确地践行了感恩。我刚才做了10次感恩练习吗？你无法像知道自己做了10次肱二头肌弯举那样肯定地说出来。你不知道，这真的让我变得更好了吗？你在健身房会得到一种充血感，一种预览。大脑没有充血感。你所拥有的只是对那件事是否是你应该做的方式的一定程度的不确定性。我想是的，我会继续做下去。但是，是的， 我们确实有一些控制权，并非完全控制，但我们确实有一些控制权，而且这种控制权会随着时间的推移而得到调整，这真的很有趣。就你刚才说的选择好三明治那点，奥利弗·伯克曼有一个“已完成清单”的想法，与“待办事项清单”相反。他一天下来，会划掉一些事情，比如擦鞋、遛狗等等，他喜欢这样做。我想…… 把它改成了一份“做得好”清单，这基本上就是你说的。所以快到一天结束时，或者在一天中事情进展的时候，我会想，哦，他妈的，那次散步真棒。我今天早些时候散步感觉非常好，阳光明媚，我还看到了一只狗。真好。那只狗很酷。我当时在听这首歌，那首歌让我感到快乐，那感觉很好。都是些小事。但是，是的，我只是…… 我对你刚才说的很着迷，这种对于情绪低落的人来说可能是一种介入，对于情绪良好的人来说可能是一种催化剂。这里有两个世界在碰撞，一个是自上而下的，即在事情发生时重新定义它们。我是否真的想尽可能地活在当下，让这一切沉淀下来，然后再进行一些间隔重复，我相信我们稍后会谈到。好的。 但也有自下而上的方式，那就是，去寻找好的体验，你知道，花时间做一些值得记忆的事情。而且，是的，对于那些情绪好的人，他们想保持；对于情绪不好的人，他们想摆脱。 感觉这两件事需要协同工作。仅仅通过思考来解决生活问题或感觉问题是不够的，但如果你从不思考你美好的体验，你也会错过一些收获。哦，当然。是的，我的意思是，你希望记忆成为你的副驾驶，但你不希望它坐在驾驶座上。你说这话是什么意思？ 我的意思是，你希望实际体验事物，理想情况下是让它们携手并进。问问自己，好吧，在一天结束时，我想记住什么？ 在周末结束时，我想带走什么样的记忆。这通常会帮助我们避免陷入那些我们常常发现自己会做，但又不是我们以后特别想记住的事情的陷阱。比如，嗯，我今天查看邮件的次数太多了。 今天我已经上了太多次脸书了，比我希望的要多。那些都不是我以后想记住的事情。 那些事情，除了我必须处理的工作上的事情，大部分都是浪费时间，因为它们没有产生任何我想要带走的记忆。所以我想，投资于正确的经历会给你带来正确的记忆。我不知道这是否与你刚才说的有关。不，当然。我只是肯定…… 这是一个在努力记住它的同时，又试图体验它的过程中，被从当下抽离出来的问题。你知道，奥利弗，奥利弗有一篇非常优美、非常有趣的博客文章，他谈到有一天早上，他住在英国乡村的约克郡山谷。然后，他谈到有一天早上，美丽的雪景，太阳升起，鸟儿在歌唱， 他正在体验这件事并深爱着它。当他体验它的时候，他在想，你真的应该记住这个。就像，这真的是你应该更多记住的那种经历。而且…… 在努力享受某事的过程中，他却因为将来记不住而自责，这导致他甚至无法享受当下。我想很多人都有这种情况，你知道，这太美了，我最好抓住它，我最好将来能记住它，如果我记不住，我会感到内疚。这就像，伙计，你因为记不住一件还没他妈的结束的事情而让自己感到内疚，它甚至还没发生呢。 是的，我确实如此。我实际上恰恰相反，正是因为那个原因。如果我说，我想以后记住这个，我会说， 我能怎样，我该如何，我现在想沉浸在什么当中，以便真正从中有所收获？你知道，也许我会专注于天空，它现在的样子，或者此刻的气味或声音。也许我会花点时间，真正地审视一下我的感受，然后大概了解一下，嗯，此刻我的感受是这样的。而且， 所以，是的，我的意思是，我觉得在某些时刻，你会觉得，这太棒了，我必须抓住它，这是完全自然的。但与其自责，你可以积极主动地沉浸在你更想记住的事情中。你刚才提到了情绪。是的，你刚才提到了情绪。情绪和记忆之间有什么关系？ 嗯，我们已经谈到情绪可以是一种情境，对吧？情绪可以影响我们记住的事情以及我们记住它们的方式。 但情绪也与我们大脑中的这些动机回路相关联。所以多巴胺是一个很好的例子。多巴胺帮助我们。它本身并不具有奖励性，但它帮助我们了解奖励，了解它们在哪里以及如何获得它们。所以，这在什么时候起作用呢？当我们身处一个新地方时，你往往会有更多的多巴胺活动。 当你遇到令人惊讶的事情时，你知道，一个你以前没见过的人突然出现了。嗯，那会伴随着更多的多巴胺释放。当你好奇的时候，当你处于好奇状态时，就像你突然想到，嘿，我好像在他的书里读到过这个，但他告诉我的完全不同。现在你回去看书。我们会看到。我们已经证明，大脑中的多巴胺能神经回路会活动起来。 那些时刻往往令人难忘，部分原因是它们产生了可塑性。但这其中有一个问题，那就是情绪通常会，你知道，这些情绪强烈的时刻，对吧？ 当这些化学物质在你大脑中释放时。它们与其说是调高了记忆的音量或亮度，不如说是调高了对比度。所以它们帮助你比其他事情更容易记住某些事情。它们给我们一种生动的感觉，但不一定是那种情境。换句话说，当我们情绪激动，经历强烈的情感体验时，我们会更好地记住那次体验。 但我们不会更好地记住那次经历的所有方面。所以你经历了一次创伤。你会记住其中特别具有创伤性的部分，而不是地毯的颜色，或者当时背景中出现的那只兔子。这很有趣。假设是件好事。一个情绪强烈的人的…… 记忆会集中在哪些方面？是集中在更多的好事上，还是只是消极偏见一路到底？不，不。所以，比如说，如果你经历了一件好事，那么，有趣的是，很多研究都集中在那些令人兴奋的经历上。 比如说你滑雪，或者你喜欢滑雪，或者你喜欢冲浪，然后你去冲浪。那些通常是愉快的、令人兴奋的美好经历。然后又会发生什么呢？你会记住那些经历中最重要、最引人注目的部分。也许你正在冲浪，你抓住的那个特别的浪是你那组浪中最令人兴奋的部分，而不是其他事情。 现在，当你拥有积极的、令人平静的体验时，我们对它们的了解就不那么多了。例如，你回到家拥抱你的伴侣，或者你的狗开始舔你的手之类的。不一定令人兴奋，也许吧，但如果它令人放松。 大脑中释放的化学物质不会是相同的，这些化学物质不会促进这些记忆。我们不太清楚那些平静的经历是否有什么优势。或许，那些让你产生情绪记忆增强的、更根深蒂固的生物反应，往往是针对更令人兴奋的经历。记忆和想象之间有什么区别？ 不多。所以，如果你在人们想象某事时扫描他们的大脑，你会发现那些脑部扫描图，在大多数情况下，与某人实际观看电影或听故事时的脑部扫描图无法区分。 而那些脑部扫描与某人回忆电影、回忆故事或回忆他们实际经历的场景时的扫描也相当难以区分。我们很可能是在想象过去可能是怎样的，想象现在正在发生什么，并使用同样的核心系统来想象未来可能发生什么。 区别在于，我们确实拥有这个情景记忆系统，它能让我们将经历与特定的时间和地点联系起来。另一件事是，我们的想象通常不如现实生动。所以对我们大多数人来说， 当我们想象某事时，它不会伴随着同样强烈的气味、视觉等等。它会更侧重于我们思考过的事情和我们拥有的情感。因此，这就是我们能够区分想象和记忆的原因。 但你必须花时间，你必须调动大脑中一个叫做前额叶皮层的区域，并且真正地停下来，运用这种更具推理性的方法，才能说，这是我没有…… 实际经历过，我只是想过而已。我想过回复那封邮件，但我并没有真的去做。这种事我经常遇到，我书里写的大部分问题都是我的日常经历。所以，如果我们不记得某件事发生过，我们还能学到东西吗？你知道，你经历过，你谈到过…… 勒布朗·詹姆斯，了解比赛。如果他记不住投进那个特定的三分球，那个特定的三分球是如何被添加到他可以借鉴的经验库中，从而成为一名更好的篮球运动员的？我记不住我12岁时的这个具体动作，但它已经为他的能力做出了贡献。是否存在具身学习？有这种东西吗？这是如何运作的？ 是的，是的。所以基本上，我们主要关注的那种记忆，是我研究的那种记忆，也就是情景记忆，即能够回到特定时间和地点的能力。但是大脑有各种各样的学习能力，并非都基于情景记忆。所以，即使是记忆障碍相当严重的人，比如说，如果你出了车祸，然后你有一些…… 你知道，你的海马体受损了，你失忆了，你仍然有可能学会弹钢琴，或者学会成为一个更好的篮球运动员，或者学会所有这些技能，因为有…… 学习，任何时候你有一堆神经元相互连接，相互交流，就存在可塑性和重塑这些连接的能力。大脑一直在这样做。它一直在根据我们的经验改变其结构。 所以我们知道，例如在运动系统中，错误驱动学习的原则是存在的。即使它与任何特定的情境无关，如果我正在投那个篮球，我的大脑，有一个叫做小脑的新大脑区域，它会生成一个关于我刚才做了什么的内部模型，以及对那个球会去哪里的预测。如果球没有进入正确的位置，或者如果我在投球时感觉不对，我的…… 我的大脑会调整记忆，以便我能做得更好。事实上，我昨天刚看了一个演讲，提出睡眠是整个动态过程的重要组成部分，例如，在快速眼动睡眠期间，当我们做梦时，可能发生的事情是，至少其中一件事情是，运动系统正在真正地自我调整，以便你能够…… 根据你白天早些时候尝试学习的技能，获得更好的动作和更好的手眼协调能力。事实上，这似乎就是为什么狗，例如，晚上睡觉时会动腿的原因。这不一定是因为它们在做潜意识的梦，更可能是它们的大脑基本上只是在调整运动系统。事实上，这些运动原来是来自大脑一个非常原始的区域。 你的狗明天醒来会快2%，因为它在睡梦中练习了。你需要为此做好准备。可能吧。给我……所以在我看来，新奇的经历似乎很可靠地被储存到记忆中。这是新的。这是不同的。激烈的经历也是如此。这真的……再次强调，我想强度有点像…… 我们通常认为的新奇感是范畴上的新奇，而音量上的新奇则是…… 你能再说一遍这两种新奇的区别吗？抱歉，我没听清。嗯，如果强度是指我以前可能做过某事，但方式是我以前没有体验过的，我想这算是一种新奇。但我认为当人们想到新奇时，他们想到的是在范畴上全新的东西。我以前没有去过这个特定的度假胜地。 以前。比如说，我以前没有在这座特定的山上滑过雪。所以我们以滑雪为例。那么，一种情况可能是，我在这座山上滑过一百次了。我知道路线，但这一次我身后发生了雪崩。好的。所以我以前来过这里，但是强度不同，或者这一次我滑得更快，或者这一次我做了不同的花样。是的，这是一种新奇，但我认为对于大多数人来说，在体验上， 我们必须在大多数人生活相当规律的范围内工作。你知道，你可以说，嘿，如果你想让你的日子过得慢一点，就换条路去上班。然后你会说，是的，但是我上班只有五条路可走。你明白我的意思吗？滑雪下山等等也是如此。所以，是的，新奇和强度似乎只是今天贯穿始终的两个共同线索的杠杆。 嗯，你知道，这是个很好的观点。我认为新奇事物不一定非得是全新的。大脑总是在试图预测接下来会发生什么。这仅仅是基于大脑的连接方式。我的意思是，我会向人们详细介绍丘脑皮层相互作用，但基本要点是，当你身处一个全新的地方时，你的大脑只是…… 生成无法做出的预测，或者它根据你以前去过的类似地方做出非常微弱的预测。但比如说，你正在下山滑雪，你已经在这座山上滑了一百次了。那里仍然存在潜在的预测错误，你可以利用这些错误来驱动学习，也就是说，你可以…… 把你的注意力集中在细枝末节上，因为我的意思是，世界总是在变化，我们的大脑也总是在变化，我的意思是，一切都在变化，但我们常常只是没有注意到。如果你进行像正念这样的冥想练习，这些练习的一个重要部分就是让你自己适应…… 什么是新的，这会在你的大脑中产生预测错误，它会激发好奇心，并给你更好的记忆，它会创造更独特的记忆。所以我向你保证，几乎你做的任何事情都可以与某种新奇感联系起来，但你必须保持好奇心并去寻找它，而不是假设，不要如此沉溺于你对世界的预测，以至于你只是假设你的预测是正确的。 嗯。记忆和主观时间流逝感之间有什么关系，也就是我们感觉时间过得快或慢，或者过去时间过得快或慢的感觉？ 是的，确实有关系。人们对这种关系争论不休。但我们注意到的一件事是，我们情境的变化会影响我们的记忆。而且，特别是如果你从足够长的时间尺度来看，这会极大地影响我们判断时间流逝的能力。所以在疫情期间，人们整天坐在电脑前，就像我班上所有的学生一样。 有一次我突发奇想，在课上问他们，只是为了吸引他们的注意力：自从封锁以来，你们觉得日子过得比以前快了还是慢了？所以我会问你，也许如果你在一个被封锁的地方，日子对你来说过得快了还是慢了？是的，我想它们可能过得很快。 好的，这很有趣，但我们回到正题。所以基本上，如果我说仅仅是过去的24小时，它们过得快还是慢？ 绝大多数人说他们过得更慢了。我想120人中只有两个人说进行得更快了。大多数人说他们的日子过得更慢了。但是，说到你的观点，我说，好吧，那几周呢？到了周末，它们是进行得更快还是更慢了？每个人都说几周进行得更快了。 那么发生了什么？没有任何物理定律可以解释这一点，对吧？这就像，时间怎么可能在一天之内流逝得更慢，却在一周之内消失不见呢？原因与记忆有关。你一直待在同一个情境中，所以你的记忆并没有太大的不同。 因此，感觉好像一天过得很慢，因为你没有积累所有那些能让你感觉到时间流逝的记忆。 但是当你到达周末的时候，你什么也记不起来了，因为你所有的记忆都模糊不清，相互干扰，以至于你回首往事，感觉时间就这样流逝消失了，因为你实际上已经失去了那段时间，因为你记不起来了。所以，记忆确实会扭曲我们对时间的感觉，结果就是这样。但是反过来也成立，如果你没有记忆， 你会在时间和空间中漂浮。也就是说，如果你问有记忆障碍的人，今天是什么日期？他们无法告诉你，因为他们关于时间和日期的最后记忆，是他们拥有良好记忆的那个时候。 但是，你知道，他们会，如果他们在中风或心脏骤停后脑部受损，比如在1997年，那么对他们来说，每一天都是1997年。他们看着镜子，会想，发生了什么？我不明白。还有什么，你希望更多人了解关于记忆的什么？如果有什么…… 经常有人向你抱怨人类记忆系统是如何运作的，或者人们对它有什么普遍的误解或迷思，你希望能够消除的是什么？我想，我的意思是，有很多，我们已经讨论过一些了，但我可能最大的一个是，记忆应该是免费且容易的。 那根本不是真的。我的意思是，所有的记忆研究都表明它很困难，不容易，而且肯定不是免费的。所以一点点的意图在帮助你记住你需要的东西方面大有裨益，而不是试图记住所有东西并期望它就在那里。 所以那是一个非常重要的点。我想另一个是，记忆本应是关于过去的，但它实际上是关于现在和未来的。好吧，我们只看现在，比如说，为了让你能跟上这次谈话，你不断地在记忆中回顾我之前说过的话。 如果你没有记忆，你就会一遍又一遍地重复同样的问题。你会发现有记忆障碍的人就是这样。他们每10分钟就会重复自己说过的话，因为他们不记得了。这是你亲属开始出现痴呆症的最明显迹象之一。如果他们一遍又一遍地说同样的话，并且不记得自己重复过，那这就是他们有记忆问题的一个重要信号。 这只是一个例子。但是，其他的例子就是你回忆记忆并用它来理解当下正在发生的事情的能力。好吧，我以前来过这里，因此我知道接下来会发生什么。我做过很多次这个播客了，我知道我能做到，而且我会做得很好，因为我以前采访过很多人。而且…… 那也是你对未来的期望和你对未来的预测。 所以你记住事情的能力，你知道，你希望到了商店能买到杂货。你正在运用记忆来规划你将来在商店会买什么。然后，当你到了商店，你就必须依靠记忆来购买那些东西。所以，我的意思是，我可以给你举无数个例子。我的意思是，这些只是我刚才灵光一闪想到的。 关于记忆如何关乎现在和未来，例子不胜枚举。而且，我的意思是，如果它仅仅是关于过去的，那它就毫无用处，因为过去已经结束了。我们熬过了过去，所以过去没有什么值得我们留恋的，除了那些对现在和未来重要的事情。是的，太疯狂了。查兰·兰加纳特，女士们先生们。这个想法太吸引人了。 人类记忆是如何运作的，这是我长期以来一直非常感兴趣的事情。所以很高兴你今天能做一个入门介绍。人们应该去哪里？他们想查看你在网上做的所有事情。嗯，我有一个网站叫charanranganath.com，人们可以注册一个substack。我还没开始写，但现在我这学年的教学结束了，我会开始用它来创建一个邮件列表。免费的。 我不会向任何人推销任何东西。我只是，因为这不是我的谋生之道。所以，人们可以通过这种方式获取更多信息。你也可以查找关于我活动的信息。另外，我有一个相当活跃的Instagram，人们可以在那里关注我，账号是the memory doc，the memory DOC。那是个不错的选择。我在LinkedIn上不那么活跃，但我也有LinkedIn和blue sky。 现在不用推特了，因为那是个地狱般的地方。不过那是另一个话题了。当然，我们下次再聊。沙伦，我很感激你。谢谢你，伙计。好的。非常感谢。保重。 如果你正在寻找新的阅读建议，那么现代智慧阅读清单就是你的不二之选。这是一份你应该在有生之年阅读的100本书。这些是我读过的最有趣、最能改变人生、最具影响力的书，并附有我喜欢它们的原因的描述以及购买链接。你现在就可以通过访问chriswillx.com/books免费获取。网址是chriswillx.com/books。

D:2025.05.13>

00:00

Why is memory important? 语法解析

00:03

Well, memory is probably not important for the reason people think it is, right? So we always think, well, memory is important when we can't remember. Then we get frustrated about it. We say, oh, why can't I remember this person's name? Why can't I remember the name of that guy who was in that thing? Why memory is really important is because it's absolutely central to helping us understand the present, where we are in space, when we are in time. 语法解析

00:32

And to be able to plan and imagine possible futures. So if you look at people with memory disorders, their problem in life is not that they can't remember the past per se. 语法解析

00:45

It's that their inability to remember the past makes it hard for them to remember whether they've eaten recently, or they end up repeating themselves over and over again, or they just don't have much foresight into what they will do in the future. They have all of these deficits that keep them from living independently, not because they can't tell you what happened an hour ago or something. It's because… 语法解析

01:13

that inability leads them to just not be able to do almost anything that healthy people do in society in a day-to-day basis. Yeah. So you've sort of touched on something there. You've got a self that experiences stuff and you've got a self that remembers you experiencing stuff. What is the relationship, the difference, the tension between these two selves? 语法解析

01:37

Well, one of the things that we know from memory research is that the overwhelming majority of what we experience will be forgotten, right? So if your listeners end up telling somebody, hey, I heard this great interview on this podcast, the interviewer was on fire, you know, and so then they describe it to one of their friends. 语法解析

01:57

If they spend 10 minutes describing this long-form conversation that we're having, that would be a huge success memory-wise, right? There's no way anyone's going to regurgitate every word of what we said. And many of the important points we talk about, people will probably forget, right? So here's the thing. Now I want to make a decision about my life. Now I want to make a decision about whether to take vacations. 语法解析

02:21

What do I do? I think about all the past vacations I've taken, where I went and whether I like them or not. 语法解析

02:27

And if I do that, I'm going to be relying not on what I experienced, but on memory, which is much, much more, much less complete. Right. It's this tiny fraction of what we actually experience. And so Danny Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winning psychologist, referred to this idea that we have an experiencing self that lives through all these things that we do, but 语法解析

02:51

But the remembering self only has access to a tiny bit of that information. And that's the basis on which we decide, am I happy right now? What do I want to do in the future? Um, 语法解析

03:05

Where am I? And so forth. We're really in the situation where we make most of our decisions based on the remembering self. And it's almost as if they're two different people because of the fact that the experiencing self is in the present and the remembering self is in the past. It's like if you're a fan of that show Severance, it's a bit like that. It sort of suggests to me that the 语法解析

03:32

if there was a way for the remembering self to remember everything the experiencing self experienced, that this would give us a fuller picture. Maybe we would be choosing from a deeper, more rich data set to be able to make our decision about the vacation, whatever it is. Oh, well, we once had a conversation with somebody about going to Tulum, but I forgot about that conversation about Tulum. We went to Tulum and Tulum sucked or it was great or whatever. 语法解析

04:01

Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. And Kahneman felt like it was, in fact, quite irrational that we don't have this capability to access the experiencing self. Remember, and to me, it's actually quite the opposite. 语法解析

04:14

If you talk to people who have what's called highly superior autobiographical memory, these are people who have just this incredible database of information that they've experienced. They could tell you on a particular date seven years ago exactly what they had for breakfast, what the weather was, who won the sports matches that day. Unbelievable. And if you read descriptions, many of these people talk about it as torture. 语法解析

04:42

They say it's something that they wouldn't wish on their worst enemy. I mean, they are often plagued by memories. At best, it's irrelevant stuff. And at worst, it's the stuff that 语法解析

04:55

is minor and negative, but it just comes back to them over and over again. So one way I like to think about it is that we're blessed with this incomplete memory because what we remember tends to be what we need. So just as an analogy, imagine you are taking a trip, right? Since we're in vacation mode. Imagine you are taking a trip, you'll pack your suitcase. Now, will you pack everything you own? Probably not. 语法解析

05:24

Probably not. Okay, good. So I don't know, maybe you're a minimalist, but most of us would not, right? So when you're making a decision about what to pack, what are you thinking of? How do you choose? Probably think about similar trips you took in the past, might imagine what this trip might be like and try to work out what it could be that would be required. 语法解析

05:47

Exactly. So you're going to work out what you think you'll need on this trip, right? And you'll carry with you only the stuff that you think you'll need. Sometimes you'll carry stuff that turns out you don't use. Sometimes you'll pack some things and it turns out that you're missing something, right? And you forgot this jacket that you desperately need. And then you'll kick yourself for not having packed everything. 语法解析

06:10

But here's the bit. On average, you do pretty well by packing just what you need. And that's how memory works. It's kind of an analogy for memory and the journey of life that we take, right? Our brains are trying to figure out through millennia of evolution, what's the best information to carry with us? What's the information that we're going to need in the future? Is it going to be every word of every conversation? Or is it going to be the stuff that was important in some way? 语法解析

06:38

The stuff that we paid attention to, the stuff that was surprising or new, the stuff that got us emotionally aroused because it's rewarding or something that is scary and a threat that we want to remember later on. And if you look back at the memories of your life, those will be the kinds of things that we tend to remember better. 语法解析

07:01

Just lingering on the super-remembers for a second, what's happening inside of the brains of these people? Are their brains structurally, functionally different? Do we know why it happens? 语法解析

07:13

Yeah, it's kind of surprising how little we know about these individual differences in memory overall. There are some hints that there are some differences. I believe it was in an area of the brain called the striatum. But you know what surprised me in reading that research is how subtle and small the differences really are. 语法解析

07:37

They're not all that big. And you can look at people with severely deficient autobiographical memory, people who you ask them, you know, what they did yesterday, and they'll give you a very minimal answer and they won't be able to remember hardly anything in detail. What they tell you will sound like they're reading from a book, not something that they actually lived, right? Yeah. 语法解析

08:02

Yet you look in real life and the highly superior and the severely deficient people, 语法解析

08:07

they're functioning at equal levels. It's not like the highly superior people are limitless and they're, you know, rich and famous. And yeah, you can find some rich and famous people with H that, but for the most part, they're just like everybody else in terms of their daily life. They didn't perform better in school. They didn't do, you know, live out some amazing experiences that nobody else would have. So, um, 语法解析

08:33

We don't know enough about what makes the brains different, but it may be something related, in my opinion, and this is just purely opinion, it may be something to do with the way people think about what's interesting to them and the way they build their knowledge. So, for instance, there's all this data, or not all this data, there's all these videos of LeBron James, and I mention him in my book, 语法解析

08:59

And I also did an interview with the NBA about this. And basically, LeBron has this extraordinary memory for basketball games. He could talk about a game that he played in long ago and describe plays in that game. And the plays go point by point with a video that you could sync up to what he's saying. I mean, it's just… And you think about how quickly that information is going by him and how hard it would be to… 语法解析

09:28

construct some kind of a detailed memory from it. But the guy has studied the game and played the game for so long. What seems like this incredibly confusing array of people running around at super high speeds and all of this stuff happening, he's able to just grab it and put it in a little compartment because he's already seen it before, basically. And so he's not even looking at what's happening now. He's looking at what's going to happen 30 seconds ahead, a minute ahead. 语法解析

09:56

He's looking at where the ball is going and anticipating three plays ahead. And it's that expertise that really gives him this extraordinary ability to remember in detail. And that's a case where it's not about remembering more in the sense of just remembering everything willy-nilly. It's about remembering better in the sense of being able to grab the patterns, the information that you need, and being able to pull it out as quickly as possible. 语法解析

10:22

Okay, let's say we're talking about a normal human now, not a never-rememberer, not an everything-rememberer. How does human memory work typically in our brains? 语法解析

10:33

Oh, that's such a big, big question. I think the way human memory works is it's often spontaneous in the sense that we will, you know, in our research that's actually happening right now, but in some of our very recent research, we've found that we're not actually encoding rich memories all the time because much of the world is very predictable. 语法解析

11:00

And in fact, it looks like our brains are really kind of forming these detailed snapshot memories at these moments when we're struggling a little bit because something's new or surprising. Or at times where this is just motivationally very important to us. We just achieved a goal of some kind, right? And so… 语法解析

11:21

These moments are kind of these snapshots that we have. And then later on, they can often spontaneously pop into our heads. Like if you hear a song that you haven't heard in a long time, or if you go back to a place you haven't been to since you were a child, all of a sudden these memories pop into your head, right? But what happens is you get these little bits and pieces, and then you reconstruct that into a story. 语法解析

11:46

And so what's critically interesting about that piece is that when we're remembering, we're never really replaying the past. We're imagining how the past could have been. Just like an archaeologist imagines how an ancient civilization might have been based on some fragments of pottery that they take up, right? 语法解析

12:07

This episode is brought to you by the RP Hypertrophy app. This app has made a massive impact on my gains and enjoyment in going to the gym over the last year. It's designed by Dr. Mike Israetel and comes with over 45 pre-made training programs and more than 250 technique videos. It takes all the guesswork out of crafting the ideal lifting routine by literally spoon feeding you a step-by-step plan for every workout. It'll guide you through the exact same 语法解析

12:32

sets, reps, and weight to use, and most importantly, how to perfect your form so that every rep is optimized for maximum gains. It even adjusts every week based on your progress. And there is a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can buy it and train with it for 29 days. If you don't like it, 语法解析

12:47

They'll just give you your money back right now. You can get up to $50 off the RP Hypertrophy app by going to the link in the description below or heading to rpstrength.com slash modern wisdom using the code modern wisdom at checkout. That's rpstrength.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. That's interesting. So why do we remember some events so clearly and other ones vaguely or not at all? What predicts whether something will enter memory? 语法解析

13:16

There's many factors. I actually came up with an acronym for this after talking about memory for a long time, and it took me forever to realize that I could come up with a mnemonic to help me remember these things, which is MEDIC. And so it stands for Meaning, Error, and 语法解析

13:39

Let's see, it was meaning, error, now I'm trying to remember it all. You've got to remember the mnemonic. Distinctiveness, that's right. Meaning, error, distinctiveness, importance, and context. It did come to me, the mnemonic L. There it is. So let's go through that. Meaning is just like what I was telling you in the LeBron James example. When you have a body of knowledge about something, it makes it really easy to memorize new information. 语法解析

14:05

based on what you already know. So for instance, if you're a football fan, I'll say European football or whatever, everybody outside of America, what they would call football, right? So now I give you a hypothetical player who doesn't exist at all. And I give you the statistics on their performance. And I say, here's all the statistics you need to know about what this player is good at, what 语法解析

14:30

what they've done in the past and so forth. If you're a soccer expert, you can grab that information immediately, even though it's just a bunch of random numbers I just made up, a name of somebody who I've made up. 语法解析

14:41

Because you have a structure in your mind for locking in that information. And so meaning is a really good way to lock in new information by being able to tie what you're trying to learn with stuff you already know. So a lot of mnemonic devices work that way. I also mentioned error, and this is kind of a counterintuitive one. I usually like to talk about this last, but it's the second letter in medic. So… 语法解析

15:07

So error is basically the fact that the more we struggle to try to pull up a memory, and if we get the right feedback, what will happen is it gives our brain a chance to actually stabilize the memory and repair the problems that would happen. What I mean by this is, let's say you memorize how to pronounce my name, and then later on, 语法解析

15:30

An hour later, you just ask yourself, okay, how did I pronounce his name again? Let me try it. And you just say it. 语法解析

15:37

And then you play back what you actually said, which you did it perfectly, by the way. What you'll find is you hear that and now your brain will go, wait, I made a little bit of a mistake. It wasn't quite what I said before. Let me fix that memory. And we can see this in action in the brain. We've shown that you get activity in areas like the hippocampus when you're actually trying to retrieve information and then you repair these memories relative to 语法解析

16:05

to just trying to memorize it, just looking, right? And that's why you learn a layout of a place better if you drive yourself than if you sit in an Uber because you're actively trying to generate stuff for memory and then finding, oh, wait, I was wrong. And those errors allow the brain to build a more detailed map, so to speak. So, yeah. 语法解析

16:30

So error is one. The more you struggle, the better it is. Information will stick and you'll be able to retain it later on. If you don't give yourself a chance to struggle, like you just read the lines in play without rehearsing them from memory, you're never going to memorize it and retain it well. So that's another example. So I went to error.org. 语法解析

16:55

There was also now distinctiveness. So distinctiveness means that essentially our memories are competing with each other. And so this is a little bit counterintuitive. You might think memories are just like your phone. You store photos and every photo is independent of each other. 语法解析

17:12

But that's not the way the brain does it. This is why we don't run out of capacity like your phone does, because we're using the same neurons to code multiple memories. And so what happens is, is that there's a pattern of activity that's uniquely associated with my memory for you and a pattern of activity that's uniquely associated to other people I know. 语法解析

17:34

Now, to the extent that you look like people I know, those memories will be confusable to me. But if there's some way… 语法解析

17:45

I can attend to the features that make you different from anyone else I've met. Now I will have a distinctive memory. And so my brain, when it's trying to pull up a memory of you, it won't be as hard because you stand out relative to all the other faces of people. Right. So where this comes into play, for instance, is when people will take photos and Instagram walls when they go to places or they're at a concert and they're taking videos. 语法解析

18:13

And what you find is that people actually have a poorer memory for these experiences when they do that than when they're actually just trying to immerse themselves in the experience. And the reason is, is that when you're mindlessly taking pictures, you're not actually immersed in the details that will give you a distinctive memory. You're just kind of like, 语法解析

18:36

floating around trying to grab as much information as you can and what we lose is the memory for that experience and all we get out of it is a recording that most of us never go back to right 语法解析

18:47

So distinctiveness is hugely important. Now, you could use the camera and say, I'm going to use this camera to take a picture of something that's so uniquely associated with this place or so uniquely associated with this moment that I will not be able to forget it. And that's where you're using the camera as a way of giving you a distinctive memory as opposed to depriving you of one. 语法解析

19:11

So we've gone through M, E, and D now, right? So I is the big one, which is importance. And when I say importance, I'm not saying what you think is important in terms of your higher order self, but rather what your brain thinks is important based on evolution, right? So the things that are important, as I mentioned before, tend to be things that are emotionally evocative in some way or another or arousing in some way. 语法解析

19:39

being in a new place, being surprised, but also being scared. Traumas are enormously memorable, regardless of whether we want them to be. Things that are like being in a state of desire, those moments are very memorable to us. And so you can look at those states, and what you'll find is that there's these chemicals in the brain that are released pretty intensively during these states, chemicals like dopamine, noradrenaline, serotonin. 语法解析

20:08

cortisol. And many of your listeners, I'm sure, have heard some of these things. Dopamine, everybody talks about nowadays, right? And what dopamine does, for instance, is it gets you revved up. It doesn't actually give you a sense of pleasure, but it does get you revved up and it promotes plasticity. It allows these memories to rapidly consolidate, so to speak, so that they're much more resilient later on. 语法解析

20:34

So importance is not necessarily what I think, oh, yeah, I have to make sure that I remember this doctor appointment next week. But rather, it's something more along the lines of, oh, my God, I was in this cave and I got attacked by a bear. I want to remember that experience and I want to remember how I got there, how to avoid that in the future. Right. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. 语法解析

21:01

So importance is a big one, and that's why we often remember these emotional experiences. The last one, and I know I've gone on for a long time, but you wanted to ask for it. I did indeed. So another one is context. That's what we'll see in MED-IC. So context is the place, the time that these events took place. So when we remember events or episodic memories, 语法解析

21:24

These are memories that are glued to a place in time. There's a brain area called the hippocampus. And what we know is the hippocampus, if it has any kind of a filing scheme, it files things according to time and place. So that's kind of why, for instance, if you hear a song, and this is a song that you haven't listened to since you're a teenager… 语法解析

21:47

Well, now what happens is it brings you back to that time because it's a cue that pulls up memories from that time period. And so that time period now has all sorts of memories associated with it and might bring you back to, you know, sneaking beers with your friends in high school or might bring you back to days where you went out to the beach or whatever it was. Right. And that. 语法解析

22:11

Experience is something we would call mental time travel, where a memory can bring you back to a past context, a time and a place. And these memories might seem like they're forgotten, but they can be pulled up if you're in the right context. 语法解析

22:28

And conversely, if you're in the wrong context, it's really bad. So, for instance, just as a simple example, you walk into the kitchen and you can't remember where you are or why you went to the kitchen. Sorry. You walk into the kitchen, you can't remember why you went there. Then you walk back to whatever room you went from. 语法解析

22:46

And now it all of a sudden pops in your head. And the reason is, is that my memory for what I wanted to do was in, say, this room, which is my home office. But then when I get to the kitchen, I'm in a different context. My mind is switched over to a different place. And so these boundaries between the rooms act as shifts in our context that make it harder to remember things in the past. 语法解析

23:11

So that's the last one. And all of these factors will determine life or death, you know, in terms of memories. It seems to me, I've had it in my head as you've been explaining so far, that memory feels a little bit like the breath. The breath being one of the few windows that we have into controlling the autonomic nervous system, that you actually do it unconsciously. 语法解析

23:34

but can step in consciously and make some amendments to it too. You can kind of tinker a little bit. Is that a fair analogy in this regard that there is a, there is memory is going on. We don't necessarily get to choose. And then we also have this degree of conscious control over how much stuff gets put into memory at the time, how much we pull it back out, et cetera. 语法解析

24:01

Absolutely. In fact, I would go farther and say we both have a lot of under the hood processes of memory. We have, but we also have a ton of control with memory, although we often don't use it, or at least we often don't use it properly. 语法解析

24:17

So what I mean is, on the one hand, you have these automatic processes that happen under the hood, like the brain is constantly tuning itself up to learn from experience so that you can process things faster and more efficiently. So you're trying to learn Chinese, let's say. Initially, these characters will be very hard to read, but if you keep reading the same characters over and over, your brain will start to tune up so that you can process that information faster. 语法解析

24:46

A lot of that happens without or even really feeling the changes that are happening in the brain. It's just happening. Now, on the bad side, you hear fake news and you hear it from 10 different sources. 语法解析

24:59

And all of a sudden, it starts to feel more believable. And the reason is our brain has tuned itself up to process those messages. And in the process, it seems easier to think about. And if it seems easier to think about, we often believe it's true, right? So that's an example of some of these automatic influences of memory that I talk about in the book. But there's also gobs of control we have. So for instance, there's research showing that when we remember an event, 语法解析

25:28

We have a lot of control over the narrative that we use to put together that event, right? So there's great stories about people where they have fans of two different sports teams. They watch the same football match. Then later on, you ask them for their memories of it, and their memories are just completely different from each other because they're watching it from the perspective of the team that they're liking, right? 语法解析

25:55

And there's other research showing that you can change your perspective. You can look at the same event from a different point of view and all of a sudden remember things that you didn't remember before. And so we have control over that narrative to some degree. And this is really important when you talk about things like trauma. I used to work with veterans who had PTSD. 语法解析

26:19

And one of the big challenges that they face was they had all the shame about their trauma and they never talked about it with anyone. And you could see this massive transformation in these patients when they would get hooked in with a group and they're talking to other people who experienced similar traumas and they share their trauma. And all of a sudden they realize, well, they're not alone. 语法解析

26:46

There are other people who face similar things. And they're getting support from these people from a completely different perspective. They're getting support from people who don't blame them, who aren't telling them to feel guilty. They aren't telling them that they're cowards. And all of a sudden, they look at the same experience they had from a completely different perspective. And now what happens is you're modifying and updating that memory. 语法解析

27:12

So we have a lot of agency over the way we use memory. And I think that is important because often people feel like their memories are, you know, a literal set in stone record of what happened. 语法解析

27:26

And in fact, it's like the sands are always shifting. There's always change that's happening. Sometimes we do it without knowing it and we just make a lot of mistakes because errors start to accumulate in our memories. But sometimes we can do it properly and 语法解析

27:41

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28:03

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28:28

They ship internationally. Right now, you can get 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com slash modernwisdom using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash modernwisdom and modernwisdom at checkout. Why do we forget things? Is it just a real estate demand problem inside of our brain? 语法解析

28:54

There are two schools of thought, both of which are probably right. One is that you forget because a memory just disappears from the brain. These connections that you have between neurons that allow the memory to be pulled up, those connections start to decay and become wiped out, and then you lose access to the memory because it's just gone. 语法解析

29:18

Another school of thought is that you can't find the memory you're looking for. But if you had the right cue, you would be able to pull it up, right? So you're trying to remember the name of the guy who was in that thing and you can't pull it up. And then an hour later, it just pops into your head, but it's too late. Your conversation is over, right? So in one case, you were in the wrong context. You couldn't pull it up. But now in a different context, you can pull it up very easily. So we have… 语法解析

29:47

It's absolutely… 语法解析

29:50

unequivocal that we have access to more memory. We have more memories that we could pull up than what we can actually pull up at any given time. So some of forgetting is just not being able to find. There is some evidence, though, to suggest that not everything's completely capped. And I fully believe that, too, based on the biology. So it's a little of both. But I think 语法解析

30:17

We don't give ourselves enough of an opportunity to find those memories sometimes when they are there. How can we make ourselves forget? Is that possible? If there's something where you think, I don't want to keep that in my mind anymore. I've been able to dispense with my 16-digit pen across the front of my card that I've been desperately trying to remember for the last three years. Is there such a thing as making ourselves forget? 语法解析

30:42

There is. It's controversial as to how effective it is. But a good friend of mine, Mike Anderson, has done a lot of research on what he calls voluntary forgetting, which is basically you cue people to recall something and then you tell the person, just suppress it. Don't think about it. 语法解析

31:03

And what you find is, is that the better people get at this, the more likely it is that they can voluntarily forget something. Now, these effects aren't gigantic and it's not clear. This is something that will help you. Probably it would be something that would help you forget, you know, um, a temporary password or something like that. I would be surprised if it doesn't help you with that. Um, 语法解析

31:28

you know, maybe a traumatic experience, unlikely, but who knows if you do it enough, maybe it would lead you to forget it. If nothing else, I think it would make it harder to retrieve those memories. I get the sense. And I certainly know this for myself that, you know, if I look back across a trip that I've taken or a time, an evening that I've spent with friends or an episode or a book that I've read or whatever, I, 语法解析

31:55

and I don't feel like I've recalled enough. There's this sort of odd sense of guilt. I think, well, what was the point of doing it? What was the point of going through all of this if it was just the passage of time and I've got no memory dividend that my future self is able to tap into so that my remembering self can actually sort of extract it? Is there an issue with this, yeah, this attempt to try and memorize more, this sort of… 语法解析

32:21

never-ending overdraft of wishing that you could recall more of the things that you did? Yes and no. I mean, what you're talking about is, I think, one of those kind of points where you want to be able to remember the things that are important. So I would say remember better, not more. 语法解析

32:38

try to remember the things that matter. So if you're with your family or close friends or a partner and you go on a holiday, those are the things that we typically like to remember. I mean, to some extent, a holiday is an investment in memories, right? On the other hand, there's a lot that… 语法解析

32:54

we forget that you can look and ask yourself, you know, 10 years later, will my future self care that I forgot this? No. Okay. So not that important. And I think that if you go back to the examples of the things that you aren't remembering with it, maybe you just need the right reminder. Maybe you need to mentally go back there because sometimes what happens is you 语法解析

33:19

when you take a holiday, you're in such a different state of mind. You're in a different place. Then you come back home and, 语法解析

33:26

And you lose that part of yourself because you're a different person when you're in a different context, so to speak. So I think about this where Hawaii is my happy place. When I'm in Hawaii, I can get into a mode that I can't get in my daily experience at work. So sometimes it's a matter of you go back there and you are in the humidity and you're smelling these tropical flowers and 语法解析

33:51

birds are going and boom, you remember all these things that you couldn't remember before. And so maybe that's the thing that you want to be able to do is try to call back some of those memories, either with photos or with, you know, just at the end of the day while you're on these holidays. If you just take a moment and reflect on trying to just remember one 语法解析

34:16

positive thing from the day, right? What you'll find is that one positive thing will come to mind, and then that'll make another positive thing come to mind. And all of a sudden, you've recalled all of these experiences that you had. And the act of recalling those experiences will make it easier to bring those experiences to mind later on so that you can incorporate it into your remembering self in a more rich way. 语法解析

34:40

What are the fundamentals of training memory? You know, we've spoken about kind of how the environment cues our brain to tell us the things that we want to remember. This is how you breathe and why you breathe when you're not thinking about breathing. But if I was to start thinking about breathing and I wanted to breathe better, how should people come to think about training their memory? What should they do if they want to remember an experience while it's happening? What are the fundamentals of that? 语法解析

35:07

Okay, so there's different things. So a lot of people when they talk about memory training is like memory athletes or something where they're trying to memorize like the thousandth digit of pi. And that stuff is not going to be particularly helpful in remembering this moment that you want to hold in mind as pristinely as possible, right? What I would say is the biggest thing that helps with remembering in a way that will keep 语法解析

35:36

get you back into that moment is the sensory details, whatever they are. Now, some people don't have a great ability to remember the sensory details in certain ways. There's people who have what's called aphantasia who can't visually image things, for instance. But to the extent that you can immerse yourself in whatever makes this moment unique, you 语法解析

36:01

that will make it more memorable to you because it's going to be distinctive. The D in medic that sticks out, it'll give you a context that's very unique and specific, the C in medic. And so basically we can do that in part by controlling, managing our, you know, basically just keeping ourselves from sabotaging ourselves for the most part. So, you know, there's just certain things that are just memory blockers like stress, fatigue, 语法解析

36:30

um, illness, depression, multitasking, multitasking is probably the major malady of the modern age, right? Um, you know, if you want to remember this moment, don't keep looking at your phone. Don't keep, don't, uh, turn off, you know, put your, uh, watch and do not disturb mode because the more tempted you are to do these things, even thinking about it, 语法解析

36:54

can be enough to sap your attention and get you out of that moment that you want to remember later on. Right. Okay, so avoiding doing the things that get in the way of you recalling the things is a good place to start. Yeah. Another thing is just setting the intention of what you want to take away in the first place. So, 语法解析

37:16

And this is, I think, a great analogy to the breath, right? Because I think a lot of people think that it should just be natural, should be, we just get everything for free. And that's not really how it works, right? So if you know your memory is going to be incomplete, ask yourself what you want to take away from this experience in the first place. 语法解析

37:37

Because it's a lot easier to focus on the information that you want to take away in the first place than it is to try to pull it up later on if you did not focus on that information. Now, I know that sounds a little like, 语法解析

37:53

obvious in some ways, but how often do we really ask ourselves, what's the memory I want to take away from this experience? I would bet you almost never. I don't do it nearly as much as I should. Although I try to be kinder to my remembering self now than I used to before I wrote my book. Yeah, that's interesting. Okay, so error-driven learning, something that kind of hinted at earlier on. Yeah. Explain that to me. 语法解析

38:21

Well, this is kind of a counterintuitive concept, but basically when our brains form memories, they're a bit incomplete. And like I said, they're very tied to a context. 语法解析

38:34

And so what can be a problem with that is when you're trying to remember certain things, like let's say you're trying to remember, let's say you're trying to learn a new language, right? And you're trying to remember the words that you learned and use it in a conversation when you go on holiday. Well, if you're trying to do that, you want to be able to pull it up in a whole lot of different contexts. 语法解析

38:58

So one of the things we've found in our computer models of memory is that when people try to pull up these memories, the brain won't really do a perfect job of reconstructing what you pulled up. 语法解析

39:11

But then if you get the right answer and you have it in front of you, now the brain can tweak the memory. It can update it in a way so that it's going to be better at pulling up that information later on. So imagine, maybe I'll give you another example. Like I'm trying to memorize your name, right? So now I leave, I'm done with this podcast and I try to visualize you and pull up your name. 语法解析

39:40

Then I actually look at the video of our conversation and then I go, oh, yeah, that's Chris. And I remember his face and everything. Right. Now my brain has tweaked my memory so that I've got a more accurate memory that a more distinctive memory of who you are later on. But it's also from a different it's now been associated with a different context. 语法解析

40:02

And so the more places and times that we bring up this memory, the more resilient it will be and the less tied it will be to one unique cue that we would have. Right. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 语法解析

40:17

But on the other hand, if we don't give ourselves a chance to pull up the memory in the first place, like if we just try to, I tell myself your name over and over and over again, that's not going to be very helpful because I haven't really given my brain a chance to pull up the crummy memory that it has. I'm just kind of like trying to read this word over and over and over again, but I always have the right answer. So I'm not relying on memory in the first place. So, you know, you imagine… 语法解析

40:46

You're trying to learn how to play basketball. You're obviously bet your best bet is to actually shoot baskets, not to think about it. Right. And like and you're not going to get them all. You're not going to get them all the time. 语法解析

41:00

But it's through that struggle that your brain can tune up and say, I had this model of what I was supposed to do, and it's wrong. And so I need to fix it. And that's what we call error-driven learning. And we can see this. This is actually, if you look at AI models like ChatGPT and so forth, they work because of this principle of error-driven learning where the model tries to predict, let's say, the next word that's going to come up. 语法解析

41:26

And if it gets it wrong, then it tweaks just the connections in the model that are needed so that you can pull up that word later on again. Right. So it's learning, not trying to memorize everything, but rather learning what it needs to do to correct the mistake. And that's where our driven learning really is key. Does that suggest that we learn more from pain and learning? 语法解析

41:49

difficult life circumstances than enjoyable ones? Are we more, do we have the negativity bias present in our memory as well as in our sort of noticing our reticular activating system? 语法解析

42:00

Well, what I'll say is that the pain that I'm talking about is the pain of struggling to remember something. And so if we adopt a strategy of saying that essentially memorizing should be hard, learning should be hard as opposed to learning should be easy and I should be getting easy A's all the time, then it's not so painful. It's just part of the process. Just like you would be if you're trying to learn how to play tennis, you just do it because you like it. Right. 语法解析

42:30

And so the more we can kind of get people from thinking about memory as kind of a shortcoming to thinking about memory as learning as a journey of curiosity, then it's no longer painful. It's kind of the whole process of learning, right? So that's separate from the point that you brought up about the negativity bias, but maybe we could… 语法解析

42:49

I'll let you react to that. No, no, no. You're on the money. Keep going. Okay. So separate from this is this negativity bias. And this is another thing I think that people don't appreciate is that our memories for the past are incredibly biased by what's going on around us in the present. So what I mean by that is if I'm feeling bad, 语法解析

43:12

I will have a bias to pull up negative memories. And whatever memories I pull up, I will reconstruct them in kind of a negative way. 语法解析

43:22

Now, if I have positive, if I'm in a positive frame of mind, I will manifest that opposite bias where I'll be able to pull up memories that are more positive and reconstruct them in a more positive way. So you tend to see both kinds of biases. In fact, oddly enough, as people get, you know, really older, they tend to have more of a positive bias in their memory for whatever reason. This is, of course, just on average, but everybody has 语法解析

43:49

ups and downs, right? And that's going to affect her memories. Uh, and just as an example of this, let's say you're, you know, I had an ex-girlfriend who was dating and, you know, she dumped me for a couple of months. I'm remembering all of these terrible things, either things that I could have done that I did that might've led to the breakup or things that she did that made me think that she was such a terrible person. Uh, 语法解析

44:15

Then later on, I meet the woman of my dreams who I ended up marrying. And it was just like six months later. And now I can look back at my memories from that first relationship in a completely different perspective where it's neither good nor bad. It's just like, if anything, I dodged a bullet. And now I can look back at the positive experiences, what I got out of that relationship, as well as the negative experiences. And so that's what I mean is that 语法解析

44:45

our present beliefs as well as our emotional states affect how we reconstruct things. 语法解析

45:04

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45:26

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45:47

Right now, you can get a year's free supply of vitamin D3K2 and five free AG1 travel packs by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. Oh, that's fascinating. So this must create a kind of 语法解析

46:07

recursive loop for people whose lives are going well or lives are going badly, for people who are depressed or people who are happy because your current state 语法解析

46:18

creates a context and that context predisposes your brain to viewing and interpreting and recalling and focusing on past experiences that match with where you are right now as an experiencing self. So sad people think about more sad things and happy people think about more happy things. Is that a fair assessment? Yeah. And this is why depression is such a vicious cycle. 语法解析

46:42

Because when you're depressed, you tend to ruminate. Rumination is almost by definition regurgitating memories that are negative. 语法解析

46:51

That reinforce your feelings at the moment, right? So now you recall more negative memories. What happens? You feel worse. The worse you feel, the easier it is to recall negative memories. But even more importantly, the worse you feel, the harder it is to pull up memories that counteract your view of the world at a given time. 语法解析

47:12

A big, big part of cognitive therapy that we would do is get people to overcome those biases by actually pulling up memories that contradicted their sense of the world at a given moment. 语法解析

47:27

Because it's so easy to fall into this trap of, you know, having a negative state of mind and then reconstructing the past in the worst way possible. And then using that to confirm your beliefs about what's happening at the moment. Right. And so, you know, we do have the capability to pull ourselves out of it, at least not necessarily in cases of clinical depression. But I think, you know, when you're having a bad day, 语法解析

47:54

If you're not clinically depressed, it's a lot easier to pull yourself out of it. 语法解析

47:59

By pushing yourself to remember just one positive thing as minor as it could be at the end of your day. And I've done, I don't have the discipline to do things consistently, but when I do this, it takes me a while and I'll pull up something dumb like, Oh, that, you know, uh, I made a good sandwich at lunch or something like that. I like that sandwich. And all of a sudden, uh, 语法解析

48:25

I get access to more stuff. It changes the way I feel. And the change in feeling makes it easier to pull up other memories that make me think maybe today wasn't such a bad day after. So funny, man. You know, I've been spending a lot of time this year really trying to get into neurobiology a lot more. Rick Hansen, if you're familiar with Rick from Hardwiring Happiness, I think he's just so great. You know, he's got this unique intersection of 语法解析

48:49

dharma come buddhist mindfulness stuff and then you know the hardcore science behind the neuroscience things sort of your work as well and uh the more that i realize we have this fascinating window into the structure of our own brain and you do have some conscious control over it even though you can't predict the next thought that's going to come careening into view you do have some conscious control over it um but 语法解析

49:20

unlike going to the gym, you can't see if you're actually doing it. You can't really… 语法解析

49:25

fully tell whether or not you're doing gratitude right. Did I do 10 reps of gratitude there? You can't say that with the same level of certainty that you know if you did 10 repetitions of a bicep curl. You don't know, is this actually making me better? You get a pump. You get a preview in the gym. There's no brain pump. All you do is just have a degree of uncertainty about whether or not that thing was the way that you were supposed to do it. And I think it was, and I'll just keep on doing it. But yeah, 语法解析

49:51

It is really interesting that we do have some control, not entire control, but we do have some control and this control gets tuned up over time. Just on your point about choosing the good sandwich, Oliver Berkman has the idea of a done list, which is the opposite of a to-do list. As he goes through the day and he crosses things off like clean shoes and walked dog and stuff, he likes to do that. And I think 语法解析

50:19

adapted it to a well-done list, which is basically what you're talking about. So toward the end of the day, or as stuff goes on throughout the day, I think, oh, fuck, that was a really good walk. I had a really good walk earlier on today, and the sun was shining, and I got to see a dog. That was nice. The dog was pretty cool. And I was listening to this song, and that song makes me feel happy, and that was good. And it's little things. But yeah, I just… 语法解析

50:42

I'm kind of fascinated about what you were saying there, this sort of interjection maybe for people with a low mood or a catalyst for people that are in good mood. There's two worlds colliding here, and one of them is top-down, which is reframing things as they're happening. Do I want to really be present, as present as possible, allowing this to sink in, and then a little spaced repetition, which I'm sure we'll get onto. Okay. 语法解析

51:07

But then there's also the bottom up, which is, well, go and find good experiences, you know, go and spend time doing things that are worthy of memory. And it, yeah, for people that are in good moods, they want to maintain or bad moods, they want to get out of. 语法解析

51:22

It feels like those two things need to work simpatico together. It's not enough to just think your way out of a living problem or think your way out of a feeling problem, but you also are missing out on some of the gains if you never think about your good experiencing experiences. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, you want memory to be kind of your co-pilot, but you don't want it to be in the driver's seat, right? What do you mean when you say that? 语法解析

51:50

Well, what I mean is, is that you want to actually experience things that you want to ideally have them work hand in hand. Ask yourself, OK, what what do I want to remember at the end of the day? Right. 语法解析

52:05

what's the memory that I want to carry with me at the end of the week. And often that will help us avoid getting into traps that are things that we often find ourselves doing that are not particularly things we will want to remember later on. Like, um, I have checked email way, 语法解析

52:24

way too many times today. You know, I went on Facebook more than I would have liked today already. And those are things that are not the stuff that I want to remember later on. 语法解析

52:36

Those are the things that, you know, except for the work stuff that I have to deal with, for the most part, that's wasted time in the sense that it generated no memories that I will want to carry with me, right? So I guess investing in the right experiences will give you the right memories. I don't know if that relates to where you were going. No, for sure. I just certainly… 语法解析

52:59

an issue of being taken out of the moment, trying to bank it, to remember it whilst also trying to experience it. You know, Oliver, Oliver has this beautiful, uh, really interesting blog post where he talks about one morning he lives in the Yorkshire Dales in the UK countryside. And, uh, he talks about one morning, beautiful snow, the sun's risen and the birds are chirping and 语法解析

53:24

And he is experiencing this thing and loving it. And as he's experiencing it, he's thinking, you really should remember this. Like, this is really the sort of experience that you should be remembering more of. And 语法解析

53:35

in the act of trying to enjoy something he's whipping himself about not remembering it in future which causes him to not even enjoy it in the moment and i think lots of people have that you know this is so beautiful i better hold on to this i better be able to remember this in future if i can't remember this i'll feel guilty it's like dude you're making yourself feel guilty for not remembering a thing that hasn't fucking finished yet like it hasn't even happened 语法解析

54:00

Yeah, I do. I actually do the opposite for that very reason. I actually will, if I say, I want to remember this later on, I say, 语法解析

54:09

what can I, how can I, what do I want to immerse myself in right now that I really want to take away from this? You know, is it maybe I'll focus on the sky and what it looks like right now or the smells or the sounds of this moment. Maybe I'll just kind of take a moment and really check in with my feelings maybe, and just kind of get a sense of like, well, this is how I felt at this moment. And, 语法解析

54:35

And so, yeah, I mean, I think it's perfectly natural to be at moments where you're like, this is so good. I have to hold on to it. But rather than kicking yourself, you can be proactive and indulge yourself in the very things that you want to remember even more. You mentioned there about emotions. Yeah, you mentioned there about emotions. What's the relationship between emotions and memory? 语法解析

55:01

Well, so we already talked about the idea that emotions can be a context, right? That emotions can bias the things that we remember and the way that we remember them. 语法解析

55:13

But emotions are also associated with these motivational circuits in our brain. Right. So dopamine is a good example. Dopamine helps us. It's not about it's not rewarding per se, but it helps us learn about rewards, learn where they are and how to get them. Right. So where that comes into play is when we're in a new place, you will tend to have more dopamine activity. 语法解析

55:41

When you're encountering something that is surprising, you know, somebody comes in out of the blue that you haven't met before. Well, that will be associated with more dopamine release. When you're curious, when you're in a state of curiosity, when it's like you go, hey, I thought I read this in his book, but he's telling me something completely different. Now you go back to the book. We'll see. We've shown that you get activity throughout the dopaminergic circuits in the brain, right? Yeah. 语法解析

56:10

And those moments tend to be memorable in part because they're producing plasticity. But there is a kind of a catch to this, which is that emotions will often, you know, so these emotionally intense moments, right? 语法解析

56:29

where you get these chemicals released in your brain. They don't turn up the volume in memory or the brightness in memory so much as they turn up the contrast. So they help you remember certain things more than others. And they give us a sense of vividness, but not necessarily that context. So in other words, when we're emotionally, having an emotionally intense experience, we will remember that experience better. 语法解析

56:58

But we won't remember all of the aspects of that experience better, right? So you have a traumatic experience. You'll remember the things that were especially traumatic about it as opposed to the color of the carpet or the rabbit that was in the background when this happened. That's interesting. Let's say that it's something good. What are the areas that an emotionally strong person 语法解析

57:28

memory is going to focus on that? Is it focused on more good things or is it just negativity bias all the way down? No, no. So let's say if it's a good experience that you have, so what's kind of interesting is a lot of the work has focused on information that's experiences that are arousing. 语法解析

57:47

So say you go snowboarding or something and you like snowboarding or you like surfing and you go surfing. Those are good experiences that are pleasant experiences often that are arousing. And what happens again is you'll remember the most significant parts of those experiences, the most attention grabbing parts. Maybe you're surfing and it's that particular wave that you caught that was the most exhilarating part of your set as opposed to the other things. 语法解析

58:15

Now, when you have positive experiences that are kind of calming, we don't know as much about them. So, for instance, like you come back home and you hug your partner or you kind of like your dog starts licking your hand or something like that. Not necessarily arousing, maybe, but maybe if it's relaxing. 语法解析

58:37

It's not going to be the same chemicals released in the brain that are going to promote these memories. And we don't know as much about whether there is an advantage for those calming experiences. It may be that the sort of more hard-coded biological responses that give you these emotional memory enhancements tend to be for more arousing experiences. What's the difference between remembering and imagining? 语法解析

59:08

Not much. So if you actually scan people's brains while they're they are imagining something, you will find that those brain scans are, for the most part, indistinguishable from a brain scan of somebody actually, say, watching a movie or listening to a story. 语法解析

59:30

And those brain scans are fairly indistinguishable from somebody remembering the movie or remembering the story or remembering an experience that they actually have. We are most likely imagining how the past could have been, imagining what's happening in the present and using that same core system to imagine what could happen in the future. 语法解析

59:52

The differences are that we do have this episodic memory system that allows us to ground our experiences in a place in a time. And the other thing is that our imagination typically is not as vivid as reality. So for most of us, 语法解析

01:00:11

When we imagine something, it's not going to be associated with as intense of smell and sight and so forth. It's going to be more focused on the things that we thought about and the emotions we had. And so that's where we have this ability to tell the difference between imagination and memory. 语法解析

01:00:31

But you have to take the time, you have to engage this area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex and actually take pause and use this kind of more reasoning approach to be able to say, this is something that I didn't. 语法解析

01:00:48

actually experience i just thought about it i thought about responding to that email but i didn't really do it and this happens to me all the time most of these problems that i write about in the book are my daily experiences so is it possible to learn something if we don't remember it happening you know you go through you talked about um 语法解析

01:01:12

LeBron James, knowing games. If he can't remember shooting that particular three-pointer, how does that particular three-pointer get added to the corpus of experience that he can draw on to become a better basketball player? I can't remember this very move from when I was 12, but it has contributed to his capacity. Is there embodied learning? Is this such a thing? How does this work? 语法解析

01:01:37

Yeah, yeah. So basically, the kind of memory that we've been largely focused on is the kind of memory I study, which is episodic, that ability to travel to a particular time and place. But the brain has all sorts of capabilities for learning that are not episodic memory-based, right? So you can have somebody even who has a pretty significant memory disorder. Say if you got into a car accident and you had some… 语法解析

01:02:04

you know, damaged your hippocampus and you had amnesia, you could still potentially learn how to play the piano or learn how to become a better basketball player or learn all of these skills because there's… 语法解析

01:02:18

Learning that anytime you have a bunch of neurons connected to each other, talking to each other, there's that capability for plasticity and reforming those connections. And the brain's constantly doing that. It's constantly changing its structure based on our experiences. 语法解析

01:02:34

So that principle of error-driven learning happens, we know, in the motor system, for instance. And even if it's not tied to any particular context, if I'm shooting that basketball, my brain, there's a new brain area called the cerebellum that generates an internal model of what I just did and a prediction of where that ball is going to go into. And if the ball doesn't go into the right place, or if it doesn't feel right as I'm shooting the ball, my 语法解析

01:03:03

my brain will tweak the memory so that I will be better at. In fact, actually, I just saw a talk yesterday suggesting that sleep is a big part of that whole dynamic, that during REM sleep, when we're dreaming, for instance, what may be going on is, at least one of the things that goes on is that the motor system is really tuning itself up so that you get these 语法解析

01:03:26

better movements and better hand-eye coordination based on the skills you've tried to learn early in the day. And in fact, that seems to be why dogs, for instance, like move their legs at night when they're asleep. It's not necessarily that they're having subconscious dream as much as their brain is like basically just tuning up the motor system. And in fact, those movements come from a very primitive area of the brain as it turns out. 语法解析

01:03:54

And your dog's going to wake up tomorrow and be 2% faster because it's practiced it during its sleep. You need to be ready for that. Possibly, yeah. Give me the… So it seems to me like novel experiences are pretty reliably placed into memory. This is new. This is something that's different. And intense experiences as well. This is really… Again, which I guess intensity is kind of like… 语法解析

01:04:23

volume novelty and what we think of as typical novelty is categorical newness I suppose 语法解析

01:04:33

Can you say the difference between the two kinds of novelty again? Sorry, I missed that. Well, if intensity is something I may have done before, but in a manner that I haven't experienced it previously, which I suppose is a kind of novelty. But I think when people think about novelty, they think about something that's categorically new. I haven't been to this particular holiday destination. 语法解析

01:04:55

before. I haven't skied on this particular mountain before, let's say. So let's use skiing as an example. So one might be, I've been down this mountain a hundred times. I know the route, but this one time there's an avalanche behind me. Okay. So I've been there previously, but the level of intensity, or this time I go faster, or this time I do a different trick. Yeah, it's a kind of novelty, but I think experientially for most people, 语法解析

01:05:23

We need to sort of work within the confines that most people's lives are rather routine. You know, you can say, hey, maybe if you want to make your day go a little bit slower, take a different route to work. And you go, yeah, but there's like there's only five routes I can take to work. You know what I mean? So and the same thing goes for skiing down a mountain and so on and so forth. So, yeah, novelty and intensity just seem to be sort of two levers that common threads that have come through today. 语法解析

01:05:48

Well, you know, so it's a great point. I think that novelty doesn't have to be something that is new per se. So the brain's constantly trying to generate predictions about what's going to happen. And this is just based on the way the brain's wired. I mean, I will pour people the details of thalamocortical interactions, but the basic gist of it is that when you're in a completely new place, your brain's just 语法解析

01:06:17

generate has no predictions it can make right or it's making very weak predictions based on similar places you've been but let's say you take the example of you're going down the mountain and you're skiing and you've been down this mountain a hundred times there are still potential prediction errors there that you can make that can drive learning in the sense that you can 语法解析

01:06:41

focus your attention on the minutiae because i mean the world is always changing our brains are always changing i mean everything changes but often we just don't notice it and if you take like meditative practices like mindfulness a big part of these practices is attuning yourself to 语法解析

01:07:02

what's new and that creates these prediction errors in your brain it stimulates curiosity and will give you better memories it creates more distinctive memories so I guarantee you that almost anything you do can be associated with some novelty but you have to be curious and look for it and not assume not get so caught up in your predictions about the world that you just assume that your predictions are right you 语法解析

01:07:30

Hmm. What's the relationship between memory and a sort of subjective passage of time, the sense that we have of how quickly or how slowly time is going or time did go in the past? 语法解析

01:07:45

Yeah, there is a relationship. People argue about the relationship. But one thing that we've noticed is that shifts in our context affect our memories. And that, especially if you look on a long enough time scale, dramatically affects our ability to tell the passage of time. So during the pandemic, people would sit around their computers all day, like all the students who were in my classes. 语法解析

01:08:13

And what I would ask them, one time I just had the idea to just ask them in class just to keep their attention is, do you feel like the days are going faster or slower since the lockdowns happened than before? And so I'll ask you, maybe if you were in a place that was locked down, did the days go by faster or slower for you? Yeah, I think they probably went by pretty quickly. 语法解析

01:08:38

Okay, so this is interesting, but let's go back to it. So basically, if I said just the last 24 hours, did they go by faster or slower? 语法解析

01:08:50

overwhelming majority of people said that they went by slower. I think only two out of 120 people said it was going by faster. Most people said their days were going by slower. But then, speaking to your point, I said, okay, how about the weeks? You get to the end of the week, are they going by faster or slower? And everybody said that the weeks were going by faster. 语法解析

01:09:14

So what's going on? No law of physics can explain that, right? It's like, how does time move more slowly in a day but disappear in a week? And the reason has to do with memory. You're staying in the same context, and so you just have these memories that aren't very different from each other. 语法解析

01:09:35

And so as a result, it feels like the day has just been going really slowly because you haven't been accumulating all these memories that would give you a sense of time passing. 语法解析

01:09:45

but then you reach the end of the week and you can't remember anything because you had all of these blurry memories that interfered with each other so much that you look back and it just feels like the time went by and disappeared because you have effectively lost that time because you can't remember. Right. And so it, memories can really warp our sense of time, uh, uh, as a result. Uh, but the opposite is also true that if you don't have memories, uh, 语法解析

01:10:14

you will be floating in time and space. That is, if you ask people with memory disorders, what date is it? They won't be able to tell you because their last memory of a time and a date was the time that they had, you know, a good memory. 语法解析

01:10:32

But, you know, they'll be, if this, they had a stroke or a cardiac arrest that gave them brain damage in, you know, 1997, they will, every day is 1997 to them. And they look at the mirror and they're like, what's happening? I don't, I don't understand this. What else, what is it that you wish more people knew about memory? If there was something that, uh, 语法解析

01:11:00

is regularly complained to you about how the human memory system works or about some misunderstanding some common myth that people have around it what is it that you wish that you could dispel uh i think that i would i mean there's so many we've talked about a number of them already but i i probably the biggest one is that memory should be free and easy 语法解析

01:11:22

And that's just not true. I mean, all memory research shows that it's hard and it's not easy and it's not free for sure. And so a bit of intention goes a long way in helping you remember what you need as opposed to trying to remember everything and expecting it should be there. 语法解析

01:11:46

And so that's a really big one. And I guess the other one is that memory is supposed to be about the past, and it's really about the present and the future. Well, let's just take the present, for instance, right? For you just to keep up with this conversation, you're constantly referring back in memory to things that I previously said. 语法解析

01:12:09

If you did not have memory, you'd just be repeating the same question over and over and over again, right? And you see this in people with memory disorders. They will repeat themselves every 10 minutes because they don't remember. It's one of the biggest signs if you have a relative who's entering dementia. If they say the same thing over and over again and don't remember that they've repeated themselves, that's a big sign that they have a memory problem. 语法解析

01:12:37

So that's just one example. But, you know, others are just your ability to recall memories and use it to make sense of what's going on right now. Well, I've been here before and therefore here's what I can expect is going to happen now. I've done this podcast a number of times and I know I can do this and I'm going to do a great job of interviewing because I've interviewed a lot of people before. And 语法解析

01:13:04

And that's also your expectations for the future and your predictions about the future. 语法解析

01:13:09

And so your ability to remember to, you know, you want to be able to buy groceries when you get to the store. You're using memory to project into the future what you will be buying from the store. Right. And then later on, when you get to the store, you have to rely on memory to buy those things. So, I mean, there's I can give you a billion examples. I mean, these are just ones that just popped up off my head there. 语法解析

01:13:35

There's no shortage of examples in terms of how memory is about the present and the future. And, I mean, if it were just about the past, it would be useless because the past is over. We survived the past, so there's nothing in the past that we need to hold on to except the stuff that matters for the present and the future. Yeah, crazy. Charan Ranganath, ladies and gentlemen. It's fascinating, the idea of 语法解析

01:14:04

How human memory works is something that I've been really interested in for a long time. So it's nice that you've got to do a primer today. Where should people go? They want to check out all of the stuff that you do online. Well, so I have a website called charanranganath.com and people can sign up for a sub stack. I haven't actually started writing them yet, but now that I'm done with teaching for the year, I'll start to use that to create a mailing list. Free 语法解析

01:14:30

I'm not going to sell anything to anyone. I just, cause it's not what I do for a living. So, so people could just get more information that way. You can also look up information about my events. Also, I have an Instagram that's pretty active and people can follow me there at the memory doc, the memory DOC. And that's a good one. And a little less active on LinkedIn, but I have LinkedIn and blue sky as well. 语法解析

01:14:58

off Twitter now because it's a hellscape. That's another conversation though. Sure, I'll talk for another time. Sharon, I appreciate you. Thank you, mate. All right. Thank you very much. Take care. 语法解析

01:15:13

If you are looking for new reading suggestions, look no further than the Modern Wisdom reading list. It is 100 books that you should read before you die. The most interesting, life-changing and impactful books I've ever read with descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them. And you can get it right now for free by going to chriswillx.com slash books. That's chriswillx.com slash books. 语法解析

D:2025.05.13
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