How We Remember: Brain Mechanisms of Episodic Memory

Episodic memory proves essential for daily function, allowing us to remember where we parked the car, what time we walked the dog, or what a friend said earlier. In How We Remember, Michael Hasselmo draws on recent developments in neuroscience to present a new model describing the brain mechanisms for encoding and remembering such episodes as spatiotemporal trajectories. He reviews physiological breakthroughs on the regions implicated in episodic memory, including the discovery of grid cells, the cellular mechanisms of persistent spiking and resonant frequency, and the topographic coding of space and time. These discoveries inspire a theory for understanding the encoding and retrieval of episodic memory not just as discrete snapshots but as a dynamic replay of spatiotemporal trajectories, allowing us to "retrace our steps" to recover a memory. On the behavioral level, Hasselmo emphasizes the capacity to encode and retrieve spatiotemporal trajectories from personal experience, includ