(Ebook) Why We Forget and How to Remember Better by Andrew E. Budson, Elizabeth A. Kensinger ISBN 9780197607756, 0197607756

(Ebook) Why We Forget and How to Remember Better by Andrew E. Budson, Elizabeth A. Kensinger ISBN 9780197607756, 0197607756

By readingthis book, you will come to see that some—perhaps many—ofthe ideas you had about memory are incomplete or flat-outwrong. You will see that memory is not a single thing, butinstead composed of several distinct systems, each associatedwith a particular brain network. You will learn research-basedstrategies for making new memories and studying moreeffectively. You will gain insight into how emotion, exercise,sleep, and diet impact remembering and forgetting. You willbecome familiar with the differences between normal agerelatedforgetting and forgetting that results from Alzheimer’sdisease, and you’ll understand why you should never tell anyonewith Alzheimer’s disease something that isn’t true. You’ll cometo appreciate that forgetting isn’t always a negative—we reapsome significant benefits from forgetting.You will also learn about one of the more fascinating aspectsof memory, something that scientists have only come to fullyappreciate in recent years, and an idea that my colleagues and Ihave worked on intensively: Memory isn’t just about recallingthe past; it also plays a crucial role in allowing us to imagineand plan for the future. This important function also underscoresthat memory is not simply a literal replay of past experiences; itis a far more dynamic constructive process that supportsnumerous cognitive functions. Memory’s role in supportingthese functions—ranging from planning to problem-solving tocreative thinking—requires flexible processing; that is, theability to use past experiences in new ways and in novelcontexts. Memory is well suited to such tasks, but that sameflexibility may also contribute to errors and distortions inremembering. As Budson and Kensinger discuss, these andother complexities of memory are intriguing and sometimessurprising, but researchers are studying them and are makingprogress in understanding their nature and basis.