How and why your memories shift over time, explained by neuroscience 

Our memories for what happened are not reality

Memory is the pattern of neural activity that represents the sights, sounds, smells, feelings, information

language that you experienced when you learned something in the first place

reactivated as a neural circuit in your brain. In a human brain, there's just under 100 billion neurons

One neuron is better or worse able to communicate with the neuron that it's connected to

or one of the 10,000 that it's connected to. Those synapses tend to strengthen

when they're used repeatedly and effectively. When they're not used repeatedly or when they're used rarely or in a mistimed manner, then those synapses tend to weaken

And the strengthening and the weakening of those synapses is an active biochemical process

that makes those adjustments. And when those adjustments persist, that's what we call memory

Your hippocampus is your memory weaver. This is the part of your brain that links together the sights the sounds the smells the feelings the language the information so that they become connected into a neural circuit It turns out that every time we recall a memory for something that happened we have the opportunity

to change it, often not consciously. We might add a detail. We might leave a detail out

If somebody else experienced the same event, they might add some information that we agree

with and so we'll add that to our memory. We're not simply reproducing what it is that we had

experienced. We're reconstructing. We are building a new experience and we tend to build those

experiences according to the stories that make sense to our minds. By recognizing that we all

have a distorted understanding and recollection of the perception called memory, it demands that you

act in the world with a certain sense of humility and empathy for others. And so the more that we

understand about the biology of memory, the science of memory, the more we can develop a better

relationship with it. Your identity is so closely tied to your ability to remember

Your ability to remember what happened, the story of your life, is really who we say we are

Thank you