Chapter Five - On Memory

Our memory is like a shop in the window of which is exposed now one, now another photograph of the same person. And as a rule the most recent remains for some time the only one to be seen.

-Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove 

 

 

How do you think about memory? Is memory Like a file cabinet in which you store experiences or like a tape in your hand. There are many ways to describe memory. People talk about things being etched into memory or burned into memory. I like a definition that says memory is the way past events affect future function. If you remember that the street in which that scary dog lives you can take a detour and avoid being terrified. This kind of memory is called explicit memory and it is a kind of memory that plans the future. The chapter on memory considers the neuronal processes that underlie or support this kind of memory and examines this memory system. There are several memory systems but explicit memory is the kind that is consciously recalled. Often it has a very bland kind of memory. Marcel The protagonist in Proust's novel hopes to recover a different kind of memory. He looks for the kind of memory where emotion resides.