Gillian Murphy
Appearances
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
memory is is a resource intensive process and it's kind of um expensive if you think of it that way for your body to run your brain is expensive for your body to run in terms of resources and so the most important thing is that it's efficient so you don't need to remember every single detail of your life and if you did remember every single detail
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
then finding the information that you need would become really difficult. So I suppose my main answer to that is to challenge the idea of what does it mean to remember something well? Does it mean to remember it like a video camera with loads of detail? Or does it mean to remember in a way that serves you and helps you to survive and thrive? And I would argue it's the latter.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
Yeah, it is. And I suppose in looking back fondly, that often means we're not doing so accurately. And that's OK. I was just telling some students the other day a story about when I was a child. My parents had this like broken down old car and they bought us tickets to go and see this Power Rangers show. It was like a, you know, like a circus kind of outdoor show, but it was Power Rangers.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
And I was really young, like maybe four or five. And I have two older brothers now. And it was taking place like an hour or two away from where we live. And we were on the way there and something broke in the car, in this terrible car that we had. And the windscreen wipers stopped working and it was lashing rain, like torrential rain. And so like we couldn't drive.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
And so we pulled over and we were all upset. You know, we were small kids and we wanted to go to the show. And my parents went into a petrol station and came back out with some shoelaces. And they tied them around the windscreen wipers and they had one each. And they developed a sort of, you know, pulley system to make the windscreen wipers work enough. We were nearly there to get us there safely.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
And we got to Power Rangers and we were delighted. And we tell this story a lot. And certainly as an adult, I look back now and I think it's an example of how
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
my parents would do anything for us and they always made things happen even if they didn't have you know necessarily the resources to make things happen they had a can-do spirit that I really appreciate as an adult and as a parent now but I was telling someone this the other day and I really thought about it and I thought you know I was four or five years old I of course I wasn't laughing and happy at the fact that I was sitting in the back seat of the car and the rain was coming in and it was freezing and we were late and
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
And when I really thought about it, I think actually we were complaining and whinging in the back of the car through this whole episode, even though when I look back on it now, I see it as this kind of triumphant solution that my parents came up with. And I think a lot of us have that experience. And maybe as we become parents ourselves and as we get older,
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
we look back with maybe a more shrewd eye and we realize that maybe that didn't go exactly as we thought it might have gone. But there are huge benefits to that. You know, I enjoy that memory and it shapes how I think of our family and how I think of my parents. And And the two things feed into each other, you know, because I think of my parents as in this particular way.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
That probably is why I have misremembered that event, because I'm misremembering it in line with who they are and what they're like. And I think that's ultimately a really good thing. And like I say, you know, there's not necessarily a lot to be gained by having a perfectly accurate memory of that scenario when the inaccurate memory actually might be very adaptive and functional in its own way.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
both I suppose in in that most of the things you can probably do to improve your memory would be you know if there are things you really want to remember you should think about them often you know that would be if you if you go back to what we spoke about at the beginning there if you think of that lego tower being built and things being constructed you know the more often you revisit a memory the more solid it's going to stay and
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
it still will change. You know, there's no perfect way that you can guard against your memories changing. But I would say the most important thing is kind of just to make peace with that fact that you forgetting things and misremembering things is the way that it's supposed to work. And that's okay. And
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
maybe sometimes experiences and memories are all the more beautiful because they are fleeting and i think that's you know some people might feel that some people wouldn't but um i think it is most important that you kind of accept that that is how memory works and and you have some humility like i say with with not arguing with your spouse about whether or not such and such a thing happened you know that it's okay to meet in the middle and say look we have different memories about this and that's okay
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
A really good question. Asking people, you know, are you different? Are you special in some particular way? And I think for a lot of people, they would jump to the negative. You know, when you ask most people about their memory, a lot of us tend to focus on the flaws. They say, oh, I'm terrible at faces or I just
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
can't remember phone numbers or a terrible at general knowledge a lot of us do jump towards our flaws but like you say it could be interesting to ask people what are you particularly good at what is your niche talent when it comes to memory yeah I think you know we all store memories in different ways and we all revisit different kinds of memories in different ways as well
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
we will tend to be better and clearer at remembering the memories that we often go back to. And, you know, we all know people are different in these ways. Some people are really nostalgic and some people really kind of enjoy kind of soaking in the past and thinking about the past. And some people, you know, really, really hate it and don't want to look backwards, always want to look forwards.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
So we all differ in so many different dimensions, I'd say, in relation to this, that we that's why we see such huge variation, but, um, yeah, that's, that's why I'm so interested in memory and it's the topic I choose to study. I just think it's fascinating and it affects every area of our lives.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
Absolutely. And, you know, sometimes if sometimes someone will say to me like, why memory, you know, you could study any aspect of psychology, why memory? And I often think, you know, think who you would be if we took away your memories, if you didn't have any.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
And sometimes people will think of Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia as a way of thinking about this and think how much you lose when you lose your memories. You know, everything that makes you who you are, your preferences, your dreams, your fears, your hopes, your friends, your personality, all of it really rests on memory.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
There's very little that you can still have without, you know, some form of memory. So really to study memory, I would say is to study humans and how we are, who we are and how we use those memories every day to just kind of get through the world and live happy and fulfilling lives.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
We have good research to suggest that actually we've gotten to the point that we should get to, which is these memories that are imperfect, but they are perfectly imperfect in that we forget things in a way that helps us to be happier.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
Great. Thank you so much.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
Thank you so much for having me, Mike.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
A really interesting question to start with, because you've kind of stumbled into a huge debate, I think, that would be active amongst memory researchers. There's a few questions within that, and I know we all have that experience of saying, so-and-so has such a good memory, they're amazing.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
I suppose if you think about what we're often referring to in that regard would be maybe that they're really good at remembering trivia. I would say that about my dad. My dad is...
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
someone that I would want on my pub quiz team he's one of those people that seems to know something about everything and he just retains information and he reads a lot and so he just seems to absorb it whereas other people I suppose like you said maybe would describe an event and would be extremely confident in their memories they would say you were there and she was there and you were wearing your brown shoes and they seem to have an amazing memory maybe for personal events rather than for trivia
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
We definitely differ in that regard. Some people are kind of better at that than others, but there's a lot of other factors going on there. I think the main one is that typically you don't have any means of checking whether or not that person is correct. They might just be very confident in their memories.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
And like you say, it might ring a bell with you when you hear it, but that might just be, you know, they might just be making suggestions to you and you're kind of actually going along with them. So that's one thing we do know about memory is we're very good at building memories in response to suggestion. And it's surprisingly easy to actually plant memories in people's minds.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
And it probably happens to most of us more often than we would expect.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
Maybe before I tell you the scientific answer for it, maybe you might think for yourself, what do you think is happening? If you were to think of a metaphor, what do you feel like you're doing in your brain when you remember, I don't know, the last time you went to the movies, something like that. If I ask you that question now... What does it feel like?
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
Does it feel like you're looking for something and you pick it up like a file?
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
Yeah. So for me, that's what it feels like too. And I think a lot of people think of it like pulling a book off a library shelf, or maybe if you're a digital native, you might think of it as searching through documents on your computer. And we pull it out and we look at it and we put it back.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
And that's what it feels like to us, because I suppose that's the closest kind of analogy that we have to it. And it helps us make sense of it. But, you know, our brains are so much more incredible than a library or, you know, a computer. And it's hard for us to understand.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
And sometimes neuroscientists say if if the brain were so simple that we could easily understand it, we would be too stupid to understand. And I think about that a lot when I think about things like memory, because, you know,
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
So what we actually know is happening is it is not this kind of search and retrieval, locate an object kind of process, even though that's what most of us think it feels like. It's actually the case that your memories, like your memory for the last time you went to the movies, it's not stored in any one spot in your brain.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
Actually, all the elements of that memory are stored all across your brain. So kind of who you were with and what the movie was and what the smell was and what temperature it was in the theater. All of that is kind of dispersed across your brain. And when you remember it, you are basically combining all of those elements together. You're picking up all the little pieces.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
You know, it's kind of like building a Lego tower. You're picking up all those little blocks and And you're building it together and building a memory. So psychologists would talk about memory as a constructive process or a reconstructive process over time.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
And I suppose if you think of that process, even though it might go against what it naturally feels like, if you can believe me when I say that that is what happens, then it becomes very easy to understand how memories might change and distort over time because you're not just pulling something off a shelf, you're actually building something. So you might...
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
leave out a block next time that you build it, or you might add in a block that's not actually supposed to be there.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
Yes, exactly. So sort of on a neural basis, when I talk about gathering up all of those Lego pieces together, if you think of it on a neural basis, so in your brain down at the cellular level, when you connect up all of those individual Lego pieces, you're kind of forging connections between them. Think of it like like wearing a path across grass, right?
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
You're kind of developing a route that connects those things. And so even if you've accidentally added in a Lego block that doesn't really belong there, the next time you remember it, you're actually quite likely to also go down that same path and
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
retrieve it again and include it in the build again because it becomes part of that pathway and like this all sounds very technical but but in in a day-to-day life experience I think most of us know what that feels like you know that a memory maybe changes or distorts in some way kind of initially and then it becomes kind of cemented so you might have
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
stories that you tell amongst your family or your friends or with your partner. And, you know, you might realize later that there's something really inaccurate in that memory. And then you look back and think, God, you know, we've been telling it that way for many years. And that's the way we have come to remember that event.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
Things kind of crystallize, you know, both in your brain and then obviously socially, because you develop this kind of shared understanding with someone else based on the way that you've been telling that story.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
Sometimes, you know, people say you can never step into the same river twice because the river is not the same and you are not the same. I think it's kind of the same with memory. You know, you can never taste the same dip twice because you have changed. Your your taste buds have changed. Society has changed. And most importantly, possibly.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
one or both of your memory of what that dip used to taste like has probably changed too but I mean ultimately you know when we do understand memory and we come to understand and appreciate the way that it works I think we can learn to let go of this desire that we have to sort of fight for our memories and be able to step back in a situation like that and say that's interesting we both have a different memory of it but that's okay.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
You know, that's, that's not actually how our memories were designed to work. They're not designed to be video cameras. And this is one small instance in the course of your life where that throws up a problem, but you know, most of the time it doesn't and it's fine.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
Yeah, kind of, yeah, in a way you're answering your own question there, because I suppose, what does it mean to remember something well? I think sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that having a good memory or remembering something well means remembering it absolutely accurately with every single detail.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
There are so many movies and TV shows with these characters with these perfect memories, like photographic memories, and it's always presented as a good thing sometimes. And, you know, there's no such thing as photographic memory or eidetic memory. But also, I suppose what we've learned is that there's a very good reason that we didn't evolve that way.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
And it's not that we are imperfectly evolved as a species or that we haven't got there yet. We have good research to suggest that actually we've gotten to the point that we should get to, which is these memories that are imperfect, seemingly on the surface, but they are perfectly imperfect in that we forget things in a way that helps us to be happier.
Something You Should Know
Why Your Memory is Perfectly Imperfect & How to Love Better
And we misremember things in ways that helps us maintain bonds with people, you know, and overall, in particular, you know,