TTC Video – Prof. Steve Joordens – Memory and the Human Lifespan

What if your memory suddenly vanished? What if you could no longer summon up any recollections of your mother’s embrace, a best friend’s confidences, or the moment you first met your spouse? What if you couldn’t even remember yourself—not your name, your school, where you worked, or even the face of the total stranger staring back at you from the mirror?

If all of these memories were gone, would “self” even have a meaning?

The truth is that while you may think of human memory as a capacity—a way to call up important facts or episodes from your past—it is much, much more.

Your various memory systems, in fact, provide the continuity of consciousness that allows the concept of “you” to make sense, creating the ongoing narrative that makes your life truly yours. Without those systems and the overall experience of memory they make possible, you would have no context for the most crucial decisions of your life. You would have to make—without the benefit of experience and knowledge—the decisions that determine not only your quality of life, but your very survival. And your ability to learn, or even to form the personality that makes you unique, would similarly be set adrift.

In Memory and the Human Lifespan, Professor Steve Joordens of the University of Toronto Scarborough, who has been repeatedly honored as both teacher and researcher, leads you on a startling voyage into the human mind, explaining not only how the various aspects of your memory operate, but the impact memory has on your daily experience of life.

His 24 riveting lectures carefully explain

• the different kinds of systems that come together to make memory possible;

• how those systems work together to build and access memories of specific events, solve problems, learn basic tasks like brushing your teeth, or acquire the skills to play a musical instrument;

• the kinds of memory deficits that result when various parts of the brain are damaged or deteriorate;

• how memory shapes not only your experience of the past but also of the present, as well as your expectations of the future;

• how your memory systems develop throughout your life; and much more.

Moreover, by understanding how the brain organizes and encodes information, you can better harness its extraordinary powers to fine-tune how it works for you and use this information to help reshape your very experience of being alive.

Stand on the Threshold of Great Discoveries

While attempts to grasp and facilitate memory date back at least to classical Greece, only now can we truly begin to understand how memory works, thanks to the advantages of science and technology that have been developing for over a century.

Working with the latest findings from memory research, Professor Joordens takes you inside the human mind, from infancy to advanced age, with a special emphasis on the variety of experiences that are characteristic of the adult mind. You’ll learn

• how your brain encodes, stores, and retrieves memories;

• the specialized roles played by your different memory systems, including semantic, episodic, procedural, and implicit memory;

• how research into the workings of the brain—once dependent on studying the deficits visited on brain-damaged patients—has made extraordinary leaps, with new technologies like functional magnetic resonance imaging allowing doctors to observe the brain at work, with no harm or discomfort to the patient.

Such scientific advances have given doctors an unprecedented understanding of those deficits. And Professor Joordens makes certain in describing that underlying science that we never lose sight of the human beings who must live with the consequences of their conditions. In an especially poignant portrait, for example, he relates the story of British musician, conductor, and singer Clive Wearing. You learn how a brain infection damaged Wearing’s hippocampus, a region deep within the brain that provides, among other things, a gateway from immediate working memory to long-term memory.

Discover Startling Revelations about Human Memory

Each lecture of Memory and the Human Lifespanstartles you with surprising revelations about the extraordinary subject of memory. These include

• the different aspects of memory that taxi drivers must call on to do their job, as well as the difficulty of mastering the knowledge needed to pass the qualifying exam in London—a task for which two to four years of study are recommended;

• the evidence of often-astonishing memory capabilities in animals, including the remarkable feats of a lobster-stealing octopus in Miami;

• how the principle of perceptual fluency influences your behavior by creating subtle feelings of warm familiarity in many situations in which you aren’t even aware it is operating, from writing a story to shopping to making a choice in the voting booth; and

• what the latest research about so-called “recovered memories” and “false memories” may reveal about the accuracy of episodic memory itself, with implications we would do well to consider in many areas of life—including the courtroom.

While Professor Joordens has built these lectures around the latest scientific findings, he has gone to great lengths to make each one absolutely accessible. Every point is clearly explained, and every lecture is enriched with illustrative analogies and vivid anecdotes and examples. It’s this same approach that has won him numerous awards and accolades for his teaching, including the President’s Teaching Award—the University of Toronto’s highest honor—and the Leadership in Faculty Teaching Award.

Just as important, the science is never allowed to overshadow the idea of memory as central to our very humanity. No matter how deeply into research results a lecture may go to explore the construction or retrieval of a memory, Memory and the Human Lifespan always presents the subject as a human experience—a fascinating, multilayered exploration of yourself that you’ll never forget.