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Home 42: The Answer to Almost Everything Season 1 Episode 82

Why do we lose our memory?

42: The Answer to Almost Everything · Season 1 · Episode 82
We've all experienced it: a name that slips our mind or a new password. Forgetting is annoying and sometimes embarrassing. But how does the brain decide what we forget? There's a kind of competition among our memories. Stronger, more repeated impressions prevail over weaker ones. But are these erased memories lost forever? This question has been the subject of debate for decades. But in recent years, a new idea has emerged! It's possible that memories still exist. "If we stimulate the cells, the memories become available again. So, memory survives the forgetting process, but it only re-emerges under the right conditions. In a sense, this could mean that we lose the address of the memory, but not the memory itself," explains neuroscientist Tomás Ryan. Could we one day recover all our memories?

Episode Details

Air date, runtime, timezone, and episode position.

Season
1
Episode
82
Air Date
16/Jul/2023
Air Time
Runtime
30 min

Overview

Episode summary.

We've all experienced it: a name that slips our mind or a new password. Forgetting is annoying and sometimes embarrassing. But how does the brain decide what we forget? There's a kind of competition among our memories. Stronger, more repeated impressions prevail over weaker ones. But are these erased memories lost forever? This question has been the subject of debate for decades. But in recent years, a new idea has emerged! It's possible that memories still exist. "If we stimulate the cells, the memories become available again. So, memory survives the forgetting process, but it only re-emerges under the right conditions. In a sense, this could mean that we lose the address of the memory, but not the memory itself," explains neuroscientist Tomás Ryan. Could we one day recover all our memories?

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