Memories are made of this

Our ability to remember past events is a fundamental aspect of everyday life, and often one that is poorly understood. Memory has been described as a form of ‘mental time travel,’ in which we recreate past experiences inside our minds. What happens in our brain when we remember something?

In this talk, Professor David Pearson will discuss recent research on autobiographical memory, which describes how we store and retrieve information about our personal life experiences. Although our memories often feel very vivid and emotional, these personal experiences can be very deceptive. David will argue that, unlike photographs or film recordings of past events, memories represent complex mental reconstructions that can change each time or under different recall circumstances.

He will discuss research from cognitive neuroscience that has explored the close relationship between how we remember the past and how we imagine ourselves in the future, in a process termed episodic future thinking. He will also present recent findings on the role played by eye movements during the recall of past events. Finally, the implications for understanding how our brains represent information about the world and our past experiences will be discussed.

David Pearson [https://www.aru.ac.uk/people/david-pearson] is Professor of Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience at Anglia Ruskin University. His research focuses on the neurocognitive processes involved during memory, mental imagery and visuo-spatial thinking, with a particular focus on applications in the fields of clinical and environmental psychology. His lab is currently investigating applications of eye-tracking technology for understanding autobiographical memory, mental imagery and scene perception. His work has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Innovate UK, the Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy, the Nuffield Foundation and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. David is a chartered psychologist, an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a member of the Experimental Psychology Society. He maintains many international research collaborations, and is a visiting researcher at the University of Trieste in Italy. He is currently writing a book on cognitive neuroscience for Cambridge University Press.

Event presented by Anglia Ruskin University.