Cognitive Neuroscience of Remembering: Creating and Controlling Memory
MIT's Independent Activities Period seminar surveys how the brain creates, stores, and retrieves memories, and what happens when that system fails. The course draws on non-human electrophysiological studies and human brain imaging research to explain how past sensations and ideas, once dropped from conscious awareness, can be recovered to guide present thought and action, from finding your car in a parking lot to avoiding retelling the same joke twice. Topics include the neural basis of memory formation, amnesia and memory loss, and current methods researchers use to study how memories are controlled. Materials are provided through MIT OpenCourseWare and include the seminar's readings and course structure, free to access under MIT's open license, with no certificate offered.