The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind

Siegel and Bryson dispel some myths about memory, primarily the common assumption that memories are recalled like a file pulled up or a photocopy we can review at will. Instead, memory is far more questionable, revealing more about perspective than about the truth of the past. Essentially, experiences imprint on the brain, creating implicit or explicit memories. 

Implicit memory is remembering without being aware, while explicit memory is consciously remembering. Implicit memories are generally helpful, as they allow people to do things automatically in moments of stress or crisis, or simply save brain power to focus on other things. However, implicit memories can also be the root of fears and anxieties. An example is Bryson’s son’s sudden fear of swimming lessons resulting from a past bad experience. Bryson and her husband recognized the connection, but her son only knew he was anxious and didn’t want to go to swimming lessons. Bryson walked him through the memory of previous swimming lessons and showed him how to work with those explicit memories to overcome the fear caused by the implicit memories.

The function of the hippocampus is to make sense of all the implicit memories in the mind. It performs this task largely by connecting implicit memories to explicit memories.