Memories are the stories of our lives. They connect us to our past and predict our future. But how are memories created and why do we forget? Memory Researcher Dr. Collen Parks joins us to explain. We talk how memories are made, the secret to improving your memory and if we’ll ever be able to download our memories. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Things We Always Forget.
Interview with Memory Researcher Dr. Colleen Parks
Nick VinZant 0:11
Hey everybody, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant. Coming up in this episode, remembering and forgetting
Dr. Colleen Parks 0:26
what's really happening is you are reconstructing things from bits and pieces that you have in the present. I think we're still quite a ways away from being able to download memory. Is it impossible? I'm not sure. At a just level, like just knowing what happened, you probably have it down really well. When it comes to remembering really specific details about something, there's a good chance you have a lot of those incorrect.
Nick VinZant 0:58
I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, we really appreciate it, it really helps us out I want to get right to our first guest. Because this is absolutely fascinating to me. We're going to talk about memory, specifically, what happens in your brain when you remember something, why you remember some things and forget others. And if our memories could ever be downloaded, this is memory researcher, Dr. Colleen parks, how does memory work?
Dr. Colleen Parks 1:32
I would say the answer is probably to start with how it doesn't work. So it's not like a video. We're not recording things constantly. It's not like a filing cabinet, you can't go back in and just pick up the same file. What's really happening is you are reconstructing things from bits and pieces that you have in the present. So you might have somebody asked you having somebody asked you a question. And that serves as a cue to your own memory. Whether that will be successful or not depends a lot on how good the cue is. So, you know, if they're asking you a really a really vague question, then you might not be able to remember whatever it is they're trying to get at. Whereas if they asked you something very specific, like, you know what happened at the party last night, that you would be much more likely to be able to remember. But I think I think the takeaway is, when I say memory is reconstructive. What I mean is, it's kind of like you're getting these bits and pieces back, but it's not going to be perfect. So you're going to make little mistakes that most of the time don't matter at all. And sometimes you make a bigger mistake, that does matter. It's okay, it works most of the time. And the purpose of memory is not to record our lives. It's not to it's not even for us to reminisce really, or to think back specifically, it's really to give us an understanding of what's going on and help us you know, expect what might come next. So it helps us build predictions about our the world around us. And sometimes that means you need to remember a specific event, like, you know, how did this person act the last time I saw them, but other times, you don't need all the details in order to predict something, you know, I don't have to remember everything in my kitchen to know what your kitchen is going to kind of be like in general.
Nick VinZant 3:50
So when we remember something, what I'm imagining is, is there a physical change in our brain? Like how are we remembering it?
Dr. Colleen Parks 4:00
Yes, there is. So there is a structure called the hippocampus. It's kind of buried in the brain, it's underneath some cortical layers. That structure is really important for remembering previous episodes of something or a previous event. So what happens is, neurons fire in in that particular structure. And it kind of connects all of these different pieces together. So if you are remembering a visual component of something, this one structure the hippocampus is going to talk to the you know, visual processing areas in the brain. It can then connect up all of these kind of different sensory components of the memory and in conjunction with some other some other areas like that is how you remember is you've got this kind of indexing system. Right. And that's kind of what the hippocampus is doing.
Nick VinZant 5:04
When we decide kind of what we remember and what we forget, does our brain subconsciously make that decision? Right? So something happens, but our brain decides, hey, this thing is important. Or do we just happen to remember it,
Dr. Colleen Parks 5:20
I would say more often than not, there's something there. That makes it somewhat more important to remember than say what you had for breakfast yesterday. So if you spilled your breakfast in your lap, then maybe you would remember it for longer than you would if you had not, and it was just kind of a normal morning. So something that is important for what we remember are things like emotion, whether it's connected with some sort of reward, like we're going to get something out of it. And that kind of tags a memory as being more important than other memories. So what happens is, you get these little kind of tags, along with things that happen. So, you know, you spill your breakfast in your lap? Well, that's novel, right? It probably hasn't happened a lot. And so that's going to stick out a little bit more, it's going to garner more attention from you. And so you'll be more likely to remember it. Whereas when you normally eating breakfast, you're not really paying attention to what you're doing.
Nick VinZant 6:36
There's some subconscious thing that triggers even if we don't realize it, that's flags, this is being like, Hey, you might need this for later.
Dr. Colleen Parks 6:44
Possibly, yeah. And I think it can be both conscious and subconscious. So you would have some sort of emotional reaction that is conscious. But you it's not like you're trying to remember it, right? It's just that that little emotional tag is going to make that memory a little bit more important than whatever happened right? Before that was part of your normal routine.
Nick VinZant 7:08
I'll use this analogy of a computer harddrive. And hopefully for the more computer educated people, I don't mess this up. But I always remember them talking about like, right, if you delete a file, it's not really gone. It's still there somewhere. It's just a lot harder to find. When we don't remember something. Is it there somewhere? We just can't find it? Or is it really like the brain just says, we're done with this get rid? Yeah,
Dr. Colleen Parks 7:33
both I would say. So. There's a lot of times when you will forget something, and then you remember it later on. Right? In those cases, what happened is it's like you're just running up against a wall or something. It's your your, we call it blocking. That doesn't mean that the information isn't there. But for some reason, you're not able to get to it at that moment. But there are also times when it seems like the information is just gone. And we think that it kind of depends on what kind of information it is. If it's, you know, kind of simple information, say a face, recognizing a face, that is probably still there later on. But if you have to remember the connection between a face and a name, that's the kind of information that might just we don't know exactly how but somehow it disappears. Can you research how someone forgets? Yeah, actually, that's really interesting, because I am just starting to get into that kind of research. So one of the things that we're looking at is kind of how, how different types of memory processes decline over time. So more generally, what we're doing is just looking at how memory declines over time. And seeing if the way that it declines differs depending on like the type of information, again, like a single face versus a face and a name. Those two types of pieces of information might decline differently over time.
Nick VinZant 9:26
What are some of the other research that you're working on?
Dr. Colleen Parks 9:29
So I'm also looking at a way that memory changes over time. The technical term is reconsolidation. But essentially, it's just how does memory change? Well, traumatic memory is something that people are working on. This is not something I'm working on myself, but there is a lot of interest in this kind of memory change and how it might be beneficial for helping to treat PTSD because one of the main symptoms of PTSD is maladaptive memories. So if you can break the connection between somebody's conscious memory of this traumatic event, and their fear response, like their bodily response to it, you can help them with those maladaptive memories so that they can still remember what happened, but no longer have the anxiety and the fear. So that's the direction this kind of research is going in. When you
Nick VinZant 10:29
look at people's memories. Do we generally? Are they generally good? Or are we generally bad at remembering things? Like if you were to ask the average person about what happened? And then we went and looked at a surveillance camera of what happened, would we be pretty close? Or pretty far away?
Dr. Colleen Parks 10:47
Yeah, that's really interesting, because there was a recent study that came out, and they tested random people's memory for public events. And then they asked a bunch of memory experts, how well are these people going to do? And the memory experts massively underestimated? how well they did? So they actually remembered things pretty well. Now, did they get all the specific details? Right, that's another question. But did they remember that something happened? With pretty good accuracy? Yeah, they did. So I would say that, in general, our memory is pretty good. Right? It's just when you get into specific things, or special circumstances that it gets weird.
Nick VinZant 11:42
Kind of like What color was the car? We remember that it was blue, but we don't remember if it was like navy blue, or dark royal blue, or that kind of stuff? Is that? Is that kind of on the right track?
Dr. Colleen Parks 11:52
Yeah, exactly.
Nick VinZant 11:54
So are you ready for some harder slash listener submitted questions?
Dr. Colleen Parks 11:58
Okay, I'll give it my best shot.
Nick VinZant 12:00
How closely is memory tied to intelligence?
Dr. Colleen Parks 12:04
That is a good question, there is a pretty good link between the two general intelligence tests that we administer in a lab do have a significant memory component to it. But at the same time, you can have somebody who suffers from amnesia, and their intelligence, as measured on those tests, except for the memory part is fine. So on the one hand, there is a link, and on the other hand, you can distinguish between the two. So memory certainly helps us be more intelligent. But once you have developed, you know, as an adult, if you lose your memory, in the end, when I say you lose your memory, you lose the ability to create new memories. That doesn't necessarily affect your overall intelligence, any chance we will ever be able to download our memories. Oh, I have no idea. But that's really interesting. I don't think we're there yet. I think there's a lot of really cool stuff going on with AI and the brain and brain computer interactions. So we know that there's a bunch of stuff you can do, like people can play games with their mind when they have an ECG, or, you know, the kind of brainwaves. So an ECG that measures brainwaves and talks to a computer. But that's not memory. So I think we're still quite a ways away from being able to download memory. Is it impossible?
Nick VinZant 13:48
I'm not sure. But there is something physical in the brain that is happening. That if we could figure it out, like you could download this physical process as ones and zeros.
Dr. Colleen Parks 14:02
Yeah, potentially, because, I mean, it's all happening at really small scale, like, you know, you can get started talking about proteins folding when you talk about memory, but if you can find the right scale to work at, then Yeah. You know, something is happening there. You have chemical processes, you have electrical processes. And so there are ways to actually read memory from various brain imaging techniques, so you can kind of have somebody imagine something, or remember something, and they can take your brain activity and predict what that thing is.
Nick VinZant 14:50
Like, like, in a broad sense, like, Oh, this is a happy memory or I can specifically predict you're going to this is you in Disney World in 2012. Right?
Dr. Colleen Parks 14:58
more broad than that. Yeah. So it's more like, Okay, are you looking at a face? Or are you looking at a house? Or are you thinking of a face? Or are you thinking of a house? So are you you know, and you can say that with memory as well. So there's the opportunity to predict what people are thinking or imagining. And with that technology, I would imagine that eventually we'd get to something where we are if not able to write to memory, and download memory, we're certainly able to kind of read it better.
Nick VinZant 15:35
Do you think people how much faith should people put in their own memories?
Dr. Colleen Parks 15:40
I would say a decent amount, like, let's say 60/40, something like that. 60% confident 40%? I'm not sure about that. Again, I think it comes down to what we call the gist of something versus the details.
Nick VinZant 16:02
Can we intentionally forget something,
Dr. Colleen Parks 16:05
there is evidence that you can. And there's a debate about how that works. But if you practice not thinking about something, you can reduce the likelihood that you'll remember later on, you're not going to erase it from your memory, but you may be less likely to think about it at some future date. So if we take an example of something like the last really embarrassing thing that you did, right, you probably experienced that and then thought, Oh, I don't really need to remember this. And so maybe you whenever it starts to come to mind, you're like, Oh, no, I'm not thinking about that. Right? So you could replace it with something else, think about something else. The debate is over, whether that's the only way you can do it or not, because there's some evidence that says you just suppress it, somehow, you just, you know, stamp it down, basically stamp on it, and it reduces the likelihood that you'll remember it.
Nick VinZant 17:14
Kind of on that note are repressed memories are real thing. No.
Dr. Colleen Parks 17:20
No, they are not, um, has it ever happened in the history of humanity? Maybe. But the vast majority of them are some sort of false memory. And it's not that the people who are experiencing this are lying in any way, I believe they have this real experience of memory. But that is a subjective experience. It doesn't mean it's accurate, right. And there's a lot of different ways that this can happen. Some people just fall prey to suggestion. There have been a lot of cases of false memories, you know, so called recovered in therapy sessions. And I would say those we trust the least. There are also people who report kind of spontaneously remembering things. However, is it truly a recovered memory? Not necessarily. So there's this anecdote about a woman who was sexually assaulted. And she recovered the memory and told her boyfriend and was like, Oh, my God, this horrible thing happened to me. Her boyfriend said, No, you told me about that five years ago. So yes, it happened. But you it's not a recovered memory, you've already remembered it. So our ability to remember something like that, I told you something already. That declines to so my memory of my memory, can decline. So there are a bunch of different ways that people can develop these things. But the majority of the evidence really just does not support that they are real.
Nick VinZant 19:10
I heard one time that if you remember something, take a picture of it. And then let's say like your good travel memory, and then you see this picture, again of this great moment that you're actually remembering the picture, not the actual event. Is that true?
Dr. Colleen Parks 19:26
I think there's some evidence for that. Yeah. So it's, you know, it's probably a little bit easier to remember the picture because it's like this nice and capsulated scene. So yeah, there's also man, there's evidence that it it can not overwrite, but interfere with the original memory a little bit. So if the picture is more recent, maybe that's just me, you know, maybe you're remembering that better because it's easier to get to it was more recent. So I've had that experience, actually. So I thought that I remembered something at an improbably young age. But I didn't, it was that I had seen pictures of that event. Right? And that's probably what happens to a lot of people who say, Oh, I remember this from when I was two. No, that's pretty unlikely.
Nick VinZant 20:21
What is the earliest we're capable of memory.
Dr. Colleen Parks 20:24
There are certain memory systems in place when we are born, but they're automatic and unconscious. So the kind of memory that people are usually interested in is conscious, like my ability to recollect my ability to reminisce or something like that, that starts coming online. Probably at the same time, language starts coming online. And it develops over adolescence and probably reaches its peak somewhere around, I would say, 18 to 25.
Nick VinZant 20:58
When you look at, at older people and talking 70s 80s, did have their memories just faded? Or has their brain just age to the point where it can't quite get them as easily? Or is there? Is that even a difference? Really?
Dr. Colleen Parks 21:13
Well, I would say it has gotten to a point with all the changes that are happening to the brain as we age, it's gotten to a point where it's harder to get back to memories like to retrieve them, it's also harder to encode new memories or to, you know, learn new information. So trying to remember a face and a name, when you're at is going to be a lot harder than doing that when you're 20.
Nick VinZant 21:43
I never thought of that, like you would have difficulty making a new memory.
Dr. Colleen Parks 21:47
Yeah, and that's, um, that's really common. And that's what happens, actually, when we talk about amnesia is usually it's not that they can't remember their past at all, it's that they have trouble making new memories. What why would that make them seem like they can't remember their past? There is going to be some loss of memory from the past. But in general, those the older memories are actually more protected than the newer memories. So the newer memories are, you know, the older memories are there because they're it's kind of like survival of the fittest. Right. So you can get back to the older ones more easily than the newer ones, because the newer ones are decaying or declining over time. And they're declining much more quickly than the older ones are. But when when we get older, and we start forgetting things, usually what we're forgetting is, you know, we're forgetting something that I did yesterday, did I already paid that bill? Did I already tell, you know, my spouse, this piece of information, rather than let's say, forgetting where you live, where you grew up?
Nick VinZant 23:06
How our phones and screens impacting our memories?
Dr. Colleen Parks 23:10
Or are they there's no real evidence that we're seeing a decline in memory. Certainly, we are able to kind of what we call offload our memories onto these devices. And it's really helpful, but there's no evidence that that is going to hurt our memory. So I like the analogy of when novels first came out, people were all up in arms that that was going to, I don't know, hurt the youth somehow. And now, when paper came out, they were like, oh, people don't have to use a slate board anymore. So I think it's kind of the same thing. It's a new technology, there's always some fear that comes along with new technology. I don't think it's going to replace memory for us.
Nick VinZant 24:00
There's also you don't need it, right, just the brain basically, in terms of memory, just chuck anything it doesn't need.
Dr. Colleen Parks 24:05
It does a lot. Yeah. Which is not to say you're never going to remember something totally random and irrelevant. But it does kind of get rid of a lot of the unimportant stuff.
Nick VinZant 24:15
These are some more maybe personal questions, but not my personal. Um, would you rather remember every day or just one day? Yeah. And when I say remember every day, like everything about it, right, like you wear
Dr. Colleen Parks 24:32
everyday you can? Um, yeah, they're called highly superior autobiographical memory, or they have highly superior autobiographical memory. They can remember just a crazy amount of information from their lives. If that is what we were talking about, I think I would say Yeah, that would be pretty cool. Rather than just one day, however, you can also imagine a case where You have so much information in your, in your mind in your brain that you can't get back to anything because there's just too much there. For those people like what's,
Nick VinZant 25:13
what's different? Like, why is their brain like that?
Dr. Colleen Parks 25:17
We don't know yet, um, they are looking into it. So there have been some brain studies. And my memory of them is that there weren't a lot of differences that would be kind of immediately obvious, like, oh, there's, you know, the structure that supports memory for events, like what I, again, like what I had for breakfast this morning, it's bigger than them, that's not the case. It is possible that they just rehearse their memories more. And there is some evidence that they do that. It's just something they enjoy. So that could be a component of it. So it could just be that they're practicing a lot more. At the same time, it's hard to imagine that there are no differences in brain function between you know, them in house. So I imagine that that will come out at some point that there we will find differences, brain differences.
Nick VinZant 26:14
Are they smarter, generally, than most people?
Dr. Colleen Parks 26:18
No, they're not. What's really interesting
Nick VinZant 26:20
that they're not smarter than right, like you would think their IQ would be like 350, or something like that.
Dr. Colleen Parks 26:26
I know. Well, and that's what makes it so interesting is that when it is about them, they remember it really well. But if you put them in a standard memory test, where we have people learn a list of words, and then we ask them to remember them, like 20 minutes later, they do about the same as everybody else.
Nick VinZant 26:49
So there's just Narcissists, basically. So really, they just care about themselves.
Dr. Colleen Parks 26:55
That is a possibility.
Nick VinZant 26:58
We cannot scientifically rule that part out, right? Yeah, more important for the brain, remembering or forgetting,
Dr. Colleen Parks 27:06
that is a tough one. Because if you did not forget, you would probably not be able to remember either, there would be so much information, crowding your mind that you go and try to find, you know, that analogy of going and trying to find one piece of that information. It's like trying to find your keys on a messy desk. Like there's too much stuff there for you to actually see the thing that you need, I would say they're, they're both really necessary. Because the memory portion allows us to build expectations, and, you know, make predictions, even if they're unconscious predictions. And that's really important for daily life, like you have to have some idea of what's about to happen. Right? So I have to know that when I go into my kitchen, the table will be on the floor and not the ceiling.
Nick VinZant 28:02
How can two people who see the same thing, remember it so differently?
Dr. Colleen Parks 28:08
I think it has to do with what they're paying attention to. So, you know, we can experience the same event. And if I'm paying attention to one aspect of it, and you're paying attention to another aspect of it, we may come away with radically different interpretations of what happened. Very different memories of what happened. So and then your memory, like, you can kind of build on that if you remember it, you rehearse what happened, then those two memories can become more and more divergent from each other over time. But yeah, and the other aspect is, you were talking about narcissism, but like, how did that event affect me? Like maybe the event affected me differently than affected you? And so that is going to contribute to our memory of what happened?
Nick VinZant 28:59
What is the most interesting thing about memory to you?
Dr. Colleen Parks 29:03
Oh, that's tough. I would say that there are both conscious and unconscious forms of memory. And the unconscious forms are things like, you know, muscle memory, that's a real thing. And some of those, sometimes, those automatic forms of memory actually mess you up, instead of helping you. And I find that really interesting. When, you know, you do have memory for something, but it leads you in the wrong direction. So like I was saying, you know, you have a memory for these two people talking about the death penalty, one Republican, one Democrat, and sure you have a memory of it, but your automatic bias leads you in the wrong direction to remember who said What
Nick VinZant 29:54
does that happen a lot, or just more than we might think?
Dr. Colleen Parks 29:58
I say more than we might think. For example, a recent study we did compared images and sounds. And people are way better at images remembering images, and they are sounds. And so now we want to figure out why.
Nick VinZant 30:12
I mean, that makes a lot of sense, right? Like just thinking of it right now I remember, mostly pictures in my mind. I don't remember very many sounds.
Dr. Colleen Parks 30:21
Yeah, I know, it's it is, I think it is really intuitive. And what interests me is that it's really intuitive. But if I ask people like, why do you think that is, then the intuition kind of disappears. It may simply be attention. We're visual creatures. And so we're just paying more attention to the visual world than we are to the auditory world. But it could also be something specific about memory. It could be that, you know, when we remember something that's visual, we remember really precisely, but when we remember something that is auditory. Maybe we get more of the just information and not those specific details.
Nick VinZant 31:05
Something that I've always wondered is, I can remember in my mind, fantastic detail about my wife's face. But if somebody asked me to describe it, I couldn't. She got eyes like I couldn't describe it in any way. Yeah, that a memory thing? Or that's just me being an oddball.
Dr. Colleen Parks 31:24
Now, I don't think it's an oddball. And I don't think it's a memory thing, necessarily. I think it I think it has to do with visual imagery and conveying that to somebody. So I think it's just the communication process. So because the ability to remember, you know, exact detail of your wife's face, that seems just about right.
Nick VinZant 31:49
Do you have a good memory? As a memory researcher? Do you feel like you do? Know?
Dr. Colleen Parks 31:55
And there is a, you know, kind of a cliche in academics where they say you study the thing that you're bad at? And I wouldn't say that I'm bad at it, I would say I'm probably pretty average. But that is frustrating. I want it to be better given that that's what I study.
Nick VinZant 32:13
If somebody wanted to improve their memory, what would you say like, well, you should do this,
Dr. Colleen Parks 32:18
you can practice the kind of memory that you want to improve. So if you want to improve something like muscle memory, then you practice the skill that you're trying to try to get. If you're trying to better remember, like, if you forget your grocery list, and now you're in the store, and you want to remember what you needed. That's something you would probably have to practice specifically. What's interesting about training, though, is that it doesn't seem to transfer very far to other types of memory, like you get better at one kind of memory that you really practice. But you don't necessarily get better at everything.
Nick VinZant 33:00
That makes sense, right? Like you could you get great at remembering the grocery list, but not the to do list. Yeah, like that. I mean,
Dr. Colleen Parks 33:08
yeah, but yeah. But then there's also general kind of just general advice, and it's a little cheesy, but what is good for the brain is what's good for the heart. So nutrition and exercise, unfortunately, is really good. Exercise is has been shown to be really important for peak brain function.
Nick VinZant 33:37
I have one question that is more of a so I was born without a sense of smell. And I've always been told that smell is strongly related to memory. But I have a fantastic memory, at least compared to my friend, is his smell. How do like how does that relate to memory?
Dr. Colleen Parks 33:56
I think the key with smell is it doesn't happen all the time. Like, I don't notice smells a lot of the time. But I have like suddenly encountered a smell that vividly reminded me have something. So in fact, I remember the event, I was walking near some bushes, and all of a sudden I thought of my grandparents backyard, and was like, Wow, that's a really specific smell. And I hadn't thought about my grandparents backyard in years. So it's not that smell is necessarily happening all the time and creating, you know, these are great ways to get at memory. It's that when it does happen, and you get something really specific, it acts as like this really good cue, like I'm giving you a lot of information, even though it's just a smell. And it seems to work and there there are reasons for that that are brain based as well. That's
Nick VinZant 34:57
that's pretty much all the questions I have Is there anything you think That we missed or anything like that.
Dr. Colleen Parks 35:02
Not that I can think of without just giving you a lecture.