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Neuroscientists share how to 'revive' memories that you thought you had forgotten forever

A lot of the memories that you thought were gone forever can be retrieved.

via Canva/Photos

A man improving his memory.

When most people forget things that happened in the past or how to tackle specific tasks, they think that the memory is gone forever. They will have to relearn the skill, and once a memory is forgotten, it’s like the event never happened. However, new research shows that when we forget things and can’t recall them, there’s still an opportunity to retrieve the memory. Like finding a lost file in a computer—you have to find the right place to look.

A new study published in Cell found that when your brain updates your memory, it does some strategic formatting where it intentionally forgets some experiences or pieces of information to make room for new information. That’s a tough pill to swallow when you spent all day trying to learn a new program on your computer, only to forget what you did a few days later.

notes, writing notes, headphones, woman on couch, via Canva/Photos

How to recall memories you thought were long gone?

But there’s good news. When we forget things, they aren’t erased from existence. They’ve been put in a dormant state, and they can be retrieved. Let’s say you went on a trip to a lake 11 years ago, but now you can’t remember the seven friends who went with you. You close your eyes and recall everyone on the trip, but you just can’t come up with any names.

By re-experiencing something associated with the memory, such as a photo of the lake or the music you listened to, you can trigger the recall of the forgotten details, empowering you to take control of your memory. It's as if the associated item serves as a key to unlock the door to the information stored in your mind.

Took a trip to the store and you forgot the ingredients that go into your famous chilli? Even if you scan your brain and try to recall the ingredients, you may come up empty. But if you start with the ingredients you know, like the chilli powder, and grab it off the shelf and put it in your shopping cart, the other ingredients may magically come to you.

It's fascinating to think about how many memories we have that are waiting to be rediscovered with the right kind of prompting. It's like a treasure hunt in our own minds!

memory, mental issues, poor memory, notes, post-its, recall A man reading notes on a wall.via Canva/Photos

What is cued recall?

The type of mental activity that helps you recover long-forgotten memories is known in scientific circles as cued recall. Cued recall is significantly more effective than free recall due to the additional support provided by cues, helping activate dormant memory pathways.

The big takeaway from this research is that your brain is an incredibly vast and powerful place that holds so much information, it locks some of it away in a far-off place just in case you need it in the future. The wild thing is that even though it's your brain, you still may need some help from science to learn how to use it. If only the mind came with an owner's manual, we'd be in much better shape.

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Time speeding up as you age? A neuroscientist shares an easy tip to slow things down.

It's true, time goes faster as you age.

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A woman at 3 different ages.

When you’re a kid, the summers seem to last forever. As you get older, you’re amazed that “it’s summer already,” and soon enough, you can’t believe “it’s the fall again.” It’s a cruel trick of life, is that as you slow down, time speeds up. Why does time seem to move faster as we get older?

Our perception of time is fluid, either contracting or expanding. For most people, it contracts as we age because we imprint fewer experiences in our memories. We’ve seen a lot, and it is hard to be surprised. “Time is this rubbery thing,” says neuroscientist David Eagleman. “It stretches out when you really turn your brain resources on, and when you say, ‘Oh, I got this, everything is as expected,’ it shrinks up.”

David Eagleman is an American neuroscientist, author, and science communicator who teaches neuroscience at Stanford University.



How to slow the passage of time

“This is why you lay down fewer memories as you age: You’ve seen that situation before, you’ve met that personality before, you’ve done that job before. The memories you lay down are much thinner. They’re more impoverished,” Eagleman says, according to Inc.

“In contrast, when you’re in your childhood, everything is new, and so the richness of your memories gives you the impression of increased duration … but when you’re looking back at the end of an adult summer, it seems to have disappeared rapidly because you haven’t written much down in your memory,” Eagleman continues.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com


While it may seem tragic that life becomes less memorable as we age, that wisdom also comes with a challenge. If we, as Eagleman puts it, “seek novelty,” then we will create more memories in the brain, and time will slow down.

Remember when you were a kid? Life was a series of firsts, whether you swam in a pool, rode a bike, slept at your friend's house, hit a home run, or kissed someone. The key is to continue to pursue more firsts as we age. That could mean hearing a new type of music, traveling to a new place, trying food you’ve never tasted, or considering a new philosophy or way of seeing life.

This is also a great way to avoid becoming stuck in your ways as an adult.



Eagleman says you can slow down time by shaking up your neural circuitry and making new memories through simple changes to your life, such as wearing your watch on a different hand, taking a new route home from work, or rearranging your office space. “Makes sure that you stretch your mental landscape by making sure that you are learning something new,” he says.

As Bob Dylan once wrote, “He not busy being born, is busy dying,” and although it’s natural for time to speed up as we age, if things are moving too quickly, it means that it’s time to stop and be mindful of your routines to keep things fresh. It could be a warning that life has become too routine, and there’s not enough novelty for your brain to notice. So, when that happens, it’s time to get busy being born or enjoying life like you did as a child by seeking out new experiences and making new memories.

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Breakthrough study shows that memories can be erased through a simple ‘sound cue’ method

What memories would you erase?

via Pixabay

A man losing his memory.

Everyone has memories that they’d like to forget. Like that embarrassing moment at a school dance, the inappropriate joke you told in front of the wrong company or getting yelled at by the boss after screwing up at work.

But some memories are so traumatic they haunt us for the rest of our lives, causing severe distress. In people with PTSD, these memories can become more intense over time and impossible to avoid. The theory is that these memories become hard-wired in our psyches in an act of self-preservation. If we keep the trauma top of mind, we’ll be less likely to find ourselves in that situation again.

But the pain of these memories can far outweigh their benefit and lead people into a never-ending loop of trauma. That’s why a new study from the University of York is so encouraging. Researchers have found that using a method known as “sound cues” can help people forget specific memories.

It’s like they took a page out of the script of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” a film that contemplates the potential complications that could stem from being able to selectively remove our memories.


For the study, 29 participants were taught associations for pairs of words, first “hammer – office” and then “hammer – Cardi B.” When the participants went to sleep in the University of York’s sleep lab their brain waves were measured to detect when they reached deep or slow-wave sleep.

While in this stage of sleep, the researchers played the object word to them (e.g., “hammer”).

Earlier studies found that when the word pairs were introduced to a participant while awake and then a word suggesting the pair was played to them during sleep, the participant remembered the word pair more vividly in the morning. For this study, researchers presented two word pairs and learned that when the pairs of words overlapped, there was an increase in memory for one pair and a decrease in the other in the morning.

This led researchers to believe that overlapping word pairs can diminish people’s memories in favor of others.

“Although still highly experimental at this stage, the results of our study raise the possibility that we can both increase and decrease the ability to recall specific memories by playing sound cues when an individual is asleep,” says the study's first author Dr. Bardur Joensen, a former Ph.D. student in York University’s Department of Psychology, in a university release.

“People who have experienced trauma can suffer a wide range of distressing symptoms due to their memories of those events. Though still a long way off, our discovery could potentially pave the way to new techniques for weakening those memories that could be used alongside existing therapies,” he added.

This research could provide a valuable tool in helping people who’ve been through traumatizing events so that they no longer have to live life trapped in their own mental prison. It could also be a valuable tool for everyone to learn how to better categorize and prioritize their memories to improve their mental health.

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Her grandma left her a voicemail before she died. Now, this tattoo lets her hear it.

About three years ago, Sakyrah Morris' grandma left her a voicemail wishing her a happy birthday at midnight. For some reason, Morris held onto it.

Good thing she did. A month later, her grandmother passed away: "Words can’t explain how much I miss her."

Morris, a junior in high school at the time, was deeply affected by the loss — though she was relieved to know she could still listen to her grandmother's voice any time she wanted.

"I’ve been holding on to this voicemail for almost three years now, not knowing what I would do with it," she expressed on Instagram.

Photo courtesy of Sakyrah Morris.

The now-19-year-old knew she wanted to do something with her grandma's voicemail to keep her memory alive.

So she got a tattoo. A very unique one.

Morris decided to get an inked design that allows her to hear her grandma's "happy birthday" voicemail whenever she wants.

"Today I got that exact waveform [from the voicemail] tattooed across my heart," Morris wrote on Twitter along with a video showing how it works. "I am able to play it just by holding my camera over it."

The technology involved might seem near-miraculous, but it's actually pretty simple. The app Skin Motion, which Morris used for her tattoo, can scan an image and play a stored audio file that matches the visual. The app isn't reading sound waves tattooed on Morris' skin, as many Twitter users pointed out. Instead, it's recognizing that graphic of the tattoo and then playing back the audio associated with it. (Think of it like reading a QR code.)

Regardless of the technology involved in memorializing her grandma in such a powerful way, the tattoo means she'll stay with Morris for a lifetime.

"I just want to take this time to thank my grandma, my everything," Morris wrote after her tattoo and video went viral.

Photo courtesy of Sakyrah Morris.

"Every blessing that is being sent my way right now is because of her. I know that she orchestrated all of this for me. I will do nothing but continue to make her proud." ❤️

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