Reading: Study reveals why some memories stick while others fade

Study reveals why some memories stick while others fade

Last updated: 2025/10/03 at 12:39 AM

News Room Published 3 October 2025

Some memories we can remember like they happened yesterday. They tend to be the important ones, like meeting a spouse, getting a job you really wanted or finding out someone important to you had died. Some memories are really easy to recall, others are faded, and some get lost completely. But why are some memories easier to recall than others? (Picture: Getty)

A new study published in the journal Science Advances revealed mundane memories get extra sticking power in the brain if they are connected to a significant event. These events could be surprising, rewarding, or events with an emotional punch. For example, if you won the lottery, you’re more likely to remember what you were doing just before, even if it is something simple. Or you may recall what you were wearing or eating for lunch when you received some bad news (Picture: Getty)

Understanding the brain’s mechanisms could help create better treatments for people who have memory problems, and could even be used to help students remember the content they need for exams. In the study, the researches used an example of someone hiking though Yellowstone National Park and seeing a herd of bison walking along. They found that the ‘wow’ moment cements not just one magical experience in the mind, but several small, more run-of-the-mill events leading up to and away from it. Things like a rock that was on the path or a smaller animal in the grass (Picture: Getty)

Study co-author Dr. Robert M.G. Reinhart said: ‘Memory isn’t just a passive recording device: Our brains decide what matters, and emotional events can reach back in time to stabilize fragile memories. Developing strategies to strengthen useful memories, or weaken harmful ones, is a longstanding goal in cognitive neuroscience. Our study suggests that emotional salience could be harnessed in precise ways to achieve those goals. The question is, “What are the mechanisms for that?”. That’s what we tried to uncover, how the brain selectively strengthens those fragile memories’ (Picture: Getty)

Memories are stored across interconnected brain regions. Explicit memories are those about events that happened to you, like general facts and figures. So the hippocampus, neocortex, and amygdala all work to keep these episodic memories stored. But implicit memories, such as our motor functions, are stored in the basal ganglia and cerebellum. Short-term working memories primarily involve the prefrontal cortex, and big moments in our life get a primary spot (Picture: Getty)

To show that memory enhancement does happen in the brain, this study included almost 650 participants, 10 individual studies, and artificial intelligence to analyse the broader data set. The researchers stated that one major difference with past studies is that this one discovered that the brain uses a sliding scale as it decides which memories to preserve. Then, experiments after saw the participants being shown images that were connected to the different levels of rewards, and then giving them a memory quiz the next day. On things that happened after the event – or proactive memories – the strength of a recall appeared to depend on the emotional impact of the big moment itself – so the more enduring the event is, the more likely everything after it will be remembered (Picture: Getty)

But the same storage did not apply when people reached into the memory bank for things that happened in the runup, or the retroactive memories. However, these were likely to be solidified if they had similarities that connected them to the moment. They also found that if any secondary memories carried emotional weight, then the memory enhancement effect was lessened (Picture: Getty)

Dr Reinhart said: ‘The discovery has broad implications for both theory and practice. In education, pairing emotionally engaging material with fragile concepts could improve retention. In a clinical setting, we could potentially rescue memories that are weak, way back in the recesses of our mind because of normal aging, for example. You can flip it, too, for people with trauma-related disorders, maybe you don’t want to rescue a distressing memory’ (Picture: Getty)

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