Neuroscientist Rodrigo Quian Quiroga has written a wonderfully accessible book called The Forgetting Machine: Memory, Perception, and the "Jennifer Aniston Neuron. " I interviewed him for BS 141 because I wanted to hear the real science behind his work. The key idea of his book his that perception and memory are based on similar principles. Our perceptions are largely created by our brains, but the same is also true for our memories.

Our memories are dynamically recreated with each recall. This has important and surprising implications. We also explored WHY. Our brains have the capacity to remember much more than they do, because its resources are focused on creating meaning.

In the interview we discuss the experiments that support these conclusions.

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Links and References:

• The Forgetting Machine: Memory, Perception, and the "Jennifer Aniston Neuron" by Rodrigo Quian Quiroga

• RQ Quiroga, L Reddy, G Kreiman, C Koch, and I Fried. "Invariant visual representation by single neurons in the human brain." Nature 435 (2005): 1102-1107.

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