Days full of feeling

Why don’t we forget birthdays?

Key ideaMemories full of feeling are stored harder and last longer

This board holds 8 pictures, so it is quite crowded. Each picture was stored once, but the birthday cake was stored three times as strongly. First we show the top half of the house. The house does not come back; a strange shape appears instead. Then we show the top half of the cake, and the cake comes back whole.

Why?When something makes your heart race, the amygdala, which handles feelings, tells the hippocampus that this matters. That memory is then stored more strongly and replayed more often during sleep. So happy days and scary days last longer than ordinary ones. The alarm from the feelings story is the amygdala.

Go furtherThis network uses the simplest way of storing, where pictures easily blend together. That is to show how one strongly stored picture survives even in a crowded network. “Three times as strong” is a value chosen for this model.