This week’s Better You, Backed by Science is about memory.
Have you ever noticed that you can remember the plot of a film you watched years ago, yet struggle to remember a list of facts you read yesterday?
You might remember exactly where you were when someone told you important news. You might recall a story a friend shared over dinner years ago. Yet remembering someone’s phone number can feel like trying to hold water in your hands.
There’s actually a fascinating reason for this.
Stories seem to give the brain something it loves.
Rather than engaging just one system (which happens when you hear a fact), stories recruit several at once. They can trigger emotion, create mental images, activate memory, generate curiosity, and help us predict what happens next.
They also tie information together with meaning – and our brains tend to remember meaningful things better than isolated facts.
Because facts can inform us. But stories can wire information into us.
Imagine someone tells you:
“The hippocampus helps form memories.”
Interesting. If you try to remember that as a fact, you might completely forget it though… unless you have a particular motivation for understanding the brain.
But now imagine this:
“Think of the hippocampus as a tiny librarian in your brain – and it’s a cute little hippo. It’s hurrying around collecting today’s experiences and deciding where to place them on the shelves so you can find them later.”
Suddenly the information has shape. It has movement. You can picture it.
It’s actually the basis of many memory systems (e.g., memory palaces) that allow people to remember huge amounts of information.
In fact, when I was studying for my university finals back in 1992, I became fascinated by these techniques and practised one almost daily. At one point, I could memorise the sequence of a shuffled deck of playing cards in under two minutes, and even a 100-digit number in around the same time.
Interestingly, I never really used the system to memorise chemistry facts (my first degree). But the practice itself seemed to sharpen my overall memory, recall, and clarity of thought.
You’ve probably noticed this sort of thing in your own life already.
Think back to school. Many of us struggled to remember lists of dates or disconnected pieces of information. Yet tell us the story behind the event – the people involved, the drama, the challenge, the unexpected twist – and suddenly it becomes easier to remember.
It’s because stories don’t simply deliver information.
They organise it.
And perhaps that matters beyond memory.
Because we also understand ourselves through stories.
We’re the main character in the story we tell ourselves about our past and the story we tell ourselves about who we are.
But also the story we tell ourselves about what’s possible. We forever run stories in our minds of what we expect to happen.
So here’s a thought to consider: given that stories are so powerful, what if we told ourselves a different story about what’s possible?
Try This
Take one thing you’d like to remember today and turn it into a tiny story.
Maybe it’s someone’s name.
Perhaps it’s something you’re studying.
Perhaps it’s an idea you want to hold onto.
Add a person. Add an image. Add a place. Make it a little unusual if you can.
The brain seems to love memorable pictures.
Mine?
I imagine a tiny hippo librarian sprinting around inside my head carrying books labelled memories. And the library is in a university. The hippo is on the campus. Hippocampus.
And somehow, I suspect I’ll remember that one for a while.
References
Jerome Bruner. The Narrative Construction of Reality. Link.
Or the book, ‘Memory and Emotion’, by James L. McGaugh. Link.
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