But retrieval isn’t like selecting an item on a DVD menu or a YouTube channel and pressing play. We don’t read our memories like a book or play them like a movie. Visual memory isn’t like looking through your smartphone photo library, a collection of photos that can be zoomed in on and out of. You’re not viewing a photograph. Remembering is an associative scavenger hunt, a reconstruction job that involves the activation of many disparate but connected parts of the brain. We remember memories; we don’t replay them.
