Memory

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the function and significance of memory. The great writer of remembrance, Marcel Proust, declared “We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand, sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison”. The memory is vital to life and without it we could not be the people we are, but can it really contain the sum of all our experience? Is it a repository constantly mounting events waiting to be plucked to consciousness, or if not, then under what criteria are memories turfed out?With Martin Conway, Professor of Psychology at Durham University; Mike Kopelman, Professor of Neuropsychiatry at King’s College London and St Thomas’ Hospital; Kim Graham, Senior Scientist at the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Martin Conway 3 episodes
  Professor of Psychology at Durham University
• Mike Kopelman No other episodes
  Professor of Neuropsychiatry at King's College London and St Thomas' Hospital
• Kim Graham No other episodes
  Senior Scientist at the Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit

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Programme ID: p00548yy

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00548yy

Auto-category: 150.1 (Memory)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. The greatest writer about memory, in my opinion, Marcel Proust, said, quote, we are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand, sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison.