How We Remember Last Weekend

One of the most difficult questions for the science of memory deals with the most obvious fact about memories: We can, well, recollect them. The problem is that no one knows exactly how we call to mind, and with such ease, that party last weekend, with all the samba dancing and clinking of ice in glasses, the scent of circulating hors d’oeuvres, the jolt up the spine from catching a lover’s eye across a crowded room. All these emotional and sensory elements, we know, are registered in distinct areas of the brain—but how is it that we can reminisce and conjure them all up at once, recalling the mental event as a single experience?

A group of scientists based at the University of California, San Diego, have found a promising mechanism that may explain not just how