Doesn’t this ɹt with your experience? The very mention of biting
into a lemon can make you salivate. Or a song in the car transports
you back to an awkward slow dance in high school.
Or remember when you gave your four-year-old a piece of
bubble gum after ballet class that one time? And what did she want
and expect after every ballet class from then on? Of course. Bubble
gum. Why? Because her end-of-ballet-class neurons had ɹred and
wired with her bubble-gum neurons. Neurons that ɹre together
wire together.
That’s how memory works. One experience (the end of ballet
class) causes certain neurons to ɹre, and those neurons can get
wired to neurons from another experience (getting bubble gum).
Then each time we undergo the ɹrst experience, our brain connects
it with the second one. Thus, when ballet ends, our brain triggers
an expectation of getting gum. The trigger might be an internal
event—a thought or a feeling—or an external event that the brain
associates with something from your past. Regardless, this
triggered memory then sets up expectations for the future. The
brain continually prepares itself for the future based on what
happened before. Memories shape our current perceptions by
causing us to anticipate what will happen next. Our past absolutely
shapes our present and future. And it does so via associations
within the brain.
Myth #2: Memory is like a photocopy machine. When you call up
memories, you see accurate, exact reproductions of what took
place in the past. You remember yourself on your ɹrst date with
ridiculous hair and clothes, and you laugh at your own
nervousness. Or you see the doctor holding up your newborn and
you relive the intense emotions of that moment.Again, that’s not quite how it happens. Well, the ridiculous hair