Remember

Trade Paperback – NEW

A fascinating exploration of the intricacies of how we remember, why we forget, and what we can do to protect our memories, from the Harvard-trained neuroscientist and bestselling author of Still Alice.

Have you ever felt a crushing wave of panic when you cant for the life of you remember the name of that actor in the movie you saw last week, or you walk into a room only to forget why you went there in the first place? If youre over forty, youre probably not laughing. You might even be worried that these lapses in memory could be an early sign of Alzheimers or dementia. In reality, for the vast majority of us, these examples of forgetting are completely normal. Because while memory is amazing, it is far from perfect. Our brains arent designed to remember every name we hear, plan we make, or day we experience. Just because your memory sometimes fails doesnt mean its broken or succumbing to disease. Forgetting is actually part of being human.

In Remember, neuroscientist and acclaimed novelist Lisa Genova delves into how memories are made and how we retrieve them. Youll learn whether forgotten memories are temporarily inaccessible or erased forever and why some memories are built to exist for only a few seconds (like a passcode) while others can last a lifetime (your wedding day). Youll come to appreciate the clear distinction between normal forgetting (where you parked your car) and forgetting due to Alzheimers (that you own a car). And youll see how memory is profoundly impacted by meaning, emotion, sleep, stress, and context. Once you understand the language of memory and how it functions, its incredible strengths and maddening weaknesses, you can both vastly improve your ability to remember and feel less rattled when you inevitably forget. You can set educated expectations for your memory, and in doing so, create a better relationship with it. You dont have to fear it anymore. And that can be life-changing.