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Opening monologue from the play "Mnemonic," performed by playwright Simon McBurney

scene from Theatre de Complicite's Mnemonic

It was thought for years that the brain stores experiences in the same way a computer stores information on a hard drive In other words: click...ahh, there it is, exactly the way I left it. Simon McBurney recently learned that this is not the case, that in fact each time we remember an experience, our brain re-imagines that experience, constructs it again in real-time, and therefore changes it.

Links:
» Originally performed for Studio 360
» Theatre de Complicite website

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Baroness Susan Greenfield

Professor Greenfield is one of the leading brain researchers in the world. She is also the director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and a professor of pharmacology at Oxford University. She has appeared frequently on television and radio all over the world, and she speaks with us about how the brain stores experience and then recalls it as memory.

Links:
» Professor Greenfield’s Bio from Oxford University
» Professor Greenfield conducts a tour of the brain on streaming video

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Painter Joe

Untitled (Girl with toothpick), 2002

Joe Andoe paints what he sees in his minds eye, and what he's been seeing for the past ten years are horses, pastures, and - more recently - a girl with a particular about-to-say-something look on her face. He didn't realize until recently that he'd been painting a day from his past, a fragment of an afternoon 30 years earlier.

Produced by Neda Pourang

Links:
» Joe Andoe's website

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Adding Memory

In Philip K Dick’s "do androids dream of electric sheep"- the replicants- or robots- that were the most authentic were the ones with memory chips installed in them...human memory chips. This an idea which makes sense to writer Andrei Codrescu...he dares to ask the question "where do computers get their extra memory from?"

Links:
» From the book 101 Damnations: The Humorists' Tour of Personal Hells
» More on Andrei Codrescu
» More of Andrei's commentaries are available at npr.org

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Elizabeth Loftus

Professor Loftus is Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine, in the department of Psychology and Social Behavior, and the department of Criminology, Law and Society. She is known for her experiments in implanting memories, and her controversial theories about the nonexistence of repressed memories (so controversial that she once had to call the bomb squad), as well as her studies in the area of eyewitness testimony. She speaks with us about her experiments and their results.

Links:
» Professor Loftus’ bio from The University of California, Irvine

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Neil Cohen

Professor Cohen is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee, and visiting professor of law at Brooklyn Law School. He tells us about an experiment he conducts in some of his classes which demonstrates the fallibility of eyewitness identification.

Links:
» Professor Cohen’s Bio from The University of Tennessee

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Finding Amnesia

Wouldn't it be nice to just start from scratch, throw away the past and take on a new identity? With amnesia such a constant plot line in movies and romance novels, Scott Carrier figures it shouldn't be too hard to find.

Links:
» Finding Amnesia, produced by Scott Carrier, on This American Life

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Credits

This week’s program was produced by Neda Pourang and Jennie Schneier, with help from Ellen Horne, Trent Wolbe and Miyuki Jokiranta. Thanks this week to Professor Neil Cohen, Tamar Lewins, Kerrie Hillman, Viv Pearson, Tara McGuinness, Elizabeth Bernstein, Jessica Schwartz, Danielle Feman and Karla Sitha Hope Murthy.

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