Pieces of Light: How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories We Tell About Our Pasts

Pieces of Light: How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories We Tell About Our Pasts

by Charles Fernyhough
Pieces of Light: How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories We Tell About Our Pasts

Pieces of Light: How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories We Tell About Our Pasts

by Charles Fernyhough

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Overview

In a blend of memoir and science, a psychologist presents a “thoughtful exploration” of autobiographical memory (Booklist).

A new consensus is emerging among cognitive scientists: rather than possessing fixed, unchanging memories, we create new recollections each time we are called upon to remember. As psychologist Charles Fernyhough explains, remembering is an act of narrative imagination as much as it is the product of a neurological process. In Pieces of Light, he illuminates this compelling scientific breakthrough in a series of personal stories, each illustrating memory’s complex synergy of cognitive and neurological functions.

Combining science and literature, the ordinary and the extraordinary, this fascinating tour through the new science of autobiographical memory helps us better understand the ways we remember—and the ways we forget.

 Book of the Year: Sunday TimesSunday Express, and New Scientist

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780062237941
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 11/21/2023
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 322
Sales rank: 566,638
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

Charles Fernyhough is an award-winning writer and psychologist. His books include A Thousand Days of Wonder: A Scientist's Chronicle of His Daughter's Developing Mind and the novels The Auctioneer and A Box of Birds. He has written for the Guardian, the Financial Times, and the Sunday Telegraph; contributes to NPR's Radiolab; blogs for Psychology Today; and is a professor of psychology at Durham University in the United Kingdom.

Table of Contents

1 Casting a Line 1

2 Getting Lost 21

3 The Scent Museum 39

4 The Sunny Never-Never 57

5 Walking at Goldhanger 77

6 Negotiating the Past 95

7 The Plan of What Might Be 119

8 The Feeling of Remembering 133

9 Remember Me a Story 147

10 The Horror Returning 173

11 The Martha Tapes 205

12 A Special Kind of Truth 237

Brain Regions Involved in Autobiographical Memory 249

Notes 251

Acknowledgments 283

Index 285

What People are Saying About This

Daniel L. Schacter

“Combining the engaging style of a novelist with the rigour of a scientist. . . . Pieces of Light will both linger in your memory and change the way you think about it.”

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