What's that name?

A fun little article about memory from the The Boston Globe about how we think about remembering. The general consensus used to be that there was an index part of the brain that kept track of everything's whereabouts in memory. Turns out, not so much. Ever had that experience when you..just...can't...quite... remember?

Here's the key passage -

The tip-of-the-tongue experience, however, is leading researchers to question this straightforward model. According to this new theory, the brain doesn't have firsthand access to its own memories. Instead, it makes guesses based upon the other information that it can recall. For instance, if we can remember the first letter of someone's name, then the conscious brain assumes that we must also know his or her name, even if we can't recall it right away. This helps explain why people are much more likely to experience a tip-of-the-tongue state when they can recall more information about the word or name they can't actually remember.

For more on memory, I interviewed Sue Halpern for my day job. You can download the interview here.