Why We Forget and How to Remember Better: The Science Behind Memory

What would you do with the power to remember everything? If you could, would you want to? Is forgetting a weakness or an important brain function? What can you do to make your memory sharper? From two scientists specializing in memory comes WHY WE FORGET AND HOW TO REMEMBER BETTER: The Science Behind Memory (Oxford University Press on February 1, 2023) by Andrew E. Budson, MD and Elizabeth A. Kensinger, PhD. Dr. Budson is Chief of Cognitive & Behavioral Neurology at the VA Boston Healthcare System and Associate Director of Boston University’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, and Dr. Kensinger is Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Boston College. WHY WE FORGET AND HOW TO REMEMBER BETTER provides answers to many questions related to the neuroscience of memory—answers that may surprise you!

We all wonder how we can best overcome one of the human experience’s most frustrating phenomena: forgetting. Why do we forget things we want to remember, and remember things we’d rather forget? How can we be certain about something we remember—and be wrong about it? Why is it so difficult to remember people's names? How can we study hard for an exam but not be able to recall the material on the test? In WHY WE FORGET AND HOW TO REMEMBER BETTER, Dr. Andrew Budson and Dr. Elizabeth Kensinger address these questions and more, using their years of experience to guide readers toward retaining information better and understanding why memory failures arise—and what we can do to prevent them.

WHY WE FORGET AND HOW TO REMEMBER BETTER shows the reader how to use these answers to improve their memory. In its pages, readers will learn:

- How memory's most important function is not to help you remember details from your past.
- How memory is a collection of different abilities.
- How your brain creates, stores, and retrieves memories in daily life.
- Ways to control what you remember and what you forget.
- Ways to distinguish between a true and false memory.
- Effective ways to study for an exam.
- How exercise, nutrition, alcohol, cannabis, sleep, mindfulness, and music affect memory.
- How to remember people's names, 50 digits of Pi, and anything else you desire.
- How memory changes in normal aging, Alzheimer's disease, depression, anxiety, PTSD, ADHD, and other disorders—including COVID brain fog.

WHY WE FORGET AND HOW TO REMEMBER BETTER explains how our memory works, enabling us to better control what we forget and what we remember, identify false memories, understand why most of what we believe about our memory and how it works is likely wrong, and how everything from inattention such as ADHD to psychiatric problems such as PTSD can affect our memories. The book also discusses why certain individuals have a remarkable ability to retain information and what we can learn from them to improve our own memories.

WHY WE FORGET AND HOW TO REMEMBER BETTER empowers readers with the knowledge of how to remember better, whether they are a student looking to ace their next exam, a business professional preparing a presentation, or a healthcare worker needing to memorize the 600+ muscles in the human body.