Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting

by Lisa Genova

The stuff you know, so-called semantic memory, is memory for the knowledge you’ve learned, the facts you know about your life and the world—the Wikipedia of your brain. And you can recall this information without remembering the details of learning it. Semantic memory is knowledge disconnected from any personal when and where. It is data unattached to any specific life experience. Memories for what happened, for information that is attached to a where and when are called episodic. You remember episodic memories. “Remember when we went to Budapest.” Semantic memories, on the other hand, feel more like information that you just know. “Budapest is the capital of Hungary.” Episodic is personal and always about the past. Semantic memory is about information and is timeless. Just the facts, ma’am. For example, I know that the speed of light is approximately 186,000 miles per second. I pulled that information from semantic memory. If I could recall the specific circumstances of learning that nugget of information (I can’t), then that would be an episodic memory. Similarly, you know that George Washington was the first president of the United States, but you