Charan Ranganath, a professor of psychology and director of the UC Davis Memory and Plasticity Program, has been selected for a Psychonomic Society 2022 Mid-Career Award for his research on the science of human memory. Ranganath is one of three scholars worldwide chosen to receive the award from the international society.
You’re sitting at home, working at your laptop, and all of a sudden you hear the refrigerator shut off. Before you noticed its sudden silence, were you conscious it was on?
If you have watched TV since the ’90s, the sitcom theme song, “I’ll Be There For You,” has likely been stuck in your head at one point or another. New research from UC Davis suggests these experiences are more than a passing nuisance — they play an important role in helping memories form, not only for the song, but also related life events like hanging out with friends — or watching other people hang with their friends on the ’90s television show, "Friends."
When we recall a memory, we retrieve specific details about it: where, when, with whom. But we often also experience a vivid feeling of remembering the event, sometimes almost reliving it. Memory researchers call these processes objective and subjective memory, respectively. A new study from the Center for Mind and Brain at UC Davis shows that objective and subjective memory can function independently, involve different parts of the brain, and that people base their decisions on subjective memory — how they feel about a memory — more than on its accuracy.
The sexual assault and child pornography conviction of former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. The child sex abuse scandal of Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky. Hundreds of priests accused of sexual misconduct that took place over many years. These and other shocking cases — in addition to shattering public confidence in once-trusted officials and the institutions that employed them — raised the question in people’s minds: How well can anyone remember events that happened years, and even decades, earlier?
The journal Neuron recently chose its 12 best articles of 2014-15, including two from UC Davis teams engaged in the study of memory. The authors included two faculty members: Charan Ranganath, professor, and Brian Wiltgin, associate professor — both of the Department of Psychology and the Center for Neuroscience.
Why do we remember some events, places and things, but not others? Our brains prioritize rewarding memories over others, and reinforce them by replaying them when we are at rest, according to UC Davis research published in the journal Neuron.
An interdisciplinary research project at UC Davis is using music to access memories that on most days seem buried under years of living — and forgetting.
