Research Hit: You are More Likely to Remember if Your Brain Works Harder

New research shows that memory is a function of how hard the brain has to work

If that is the case, why do I forget everything before a test?

Good question, this is not about your perceived concept of hard work i.e. trying to remember lists, but how hard the brain has to work to make sense of something.

Uh, please explain!

Well, your brain is constantly faced by a flood of information: consider everything that you are experiencing at this precise moment in time. But we only remember a few fragments of this.

But as I reported previously the brain predicts pretty accurately what is happening and going to happen. But if something bucks this prediction then it is more likely to become memorable.

This is precisely what Qi Lin et al. of Yale University tested with an AI model and compared this to what human participants actually remembered.

But is this prediction error or working harder?

Well, it is both. We can think of a prediction as the auto-pilot mode and if something bucks this prediction, then the brain has to work harder to integrate this information into the system and make sense of it.