Brain mechanisms underlying the subjective experience of remembering

This review examines recent evidence on the subjective experience of remembering, drawing on functional neuroimaging in healthy participants and studies of neurological and psychiatric conditions. It describes how remembering involves reactivating sensory-perceptual features of an event, along with associated thoughts and feelings, into a conscious first-person experience. The authors consider how this process allows reflection on memory content and judgments, such as distinguishing real events from imagined or suggested ones. They propose that these findings shed new light on the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying the vivid, multisensory nature of autobiographical memory.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The ability to remember events in vivid, multisensory detail is a significant part of human experience, allowing us to relive previous encounters and providing us with the store of memories that shape our identity. Recent research has sought to understand the subjective experience of remembering: what it feels like to have a memory. Such remembering involves reactivating sensory-perceptual features of an event, and the thoughts and feelings we had when the event occurred, integrating them into a conscious first-person experience. It allows us to reflect on the content of our memories, and to understand and make judgments about them, such as distinguishing events that actually occurred from those we might have imagined or been told about. In this review, we consider recent evidence from functional neuroimaging in healthy participants and studies of neurological and psychiatric conditions, which is shedding new light on how we subjectively experience remembering.