Charan Ranganath

Demis Hassabis did work on this with Eleanor McGuire in UCL. And this goes back actually to this guy, Frederick Bartlett, who was this revolutionary memory researcher. Bartlett, he actually rejected the whole idea of quantifying memory. He said, there's no statistics in my book. He came from this anthropology perspective. And short version of the stories. He just asked people to recall things.

He would give people stories and poems, ask people to recall them. And what he found was people's memories didn't reflect all of the details of what they were exposed to, and they did reflect a lot more. They were filtered through this lens of prior knowledge. The cultures that they came from, the beliefs that they had, the things they knew.

He would give people stories and poems, ask people to recall them. And what he found was people's memories didn't reflect all of the details of what they were exposed to, and they did reflect a lot more. They were filtered through this lens of prior knowledge. The cultures that they came from, the beliefs that they had, the things they knew.

He would give people stories and poems, ask people to recall them. And what he found was people's memories didn't reflect all of the details of what they were exposed to, and they did reflect a lot more. They were filtered through this lens of prior knowledge. The cultures that they came from, the beliefs that they had, the things they knew.

And so what he concluded was that he called remembering an imaginative construction, meaning that we don't replay the past. We imagine how the past could have been by taking bits and pieces that come up in our heads.

And so what he concluded was that he called remembering an imaginative construction, meaning that we don't replay the past. We imagine how the past could have been by taking bits and pieces that come up in our heads.

And so what he concluded was that he called remembering an imaginative construction, meaning that we don't replay the past. We imagine how the past could have been by taking bits and pieces that come up in our heads.

And likewise, he wrote this beautiful paper on imagination saying when we imagine something and create something, we're creating it from these specific experiences that we've had and combining it with our general knowledge. But instead of trying to focus it on being accurate and getting at one thing, you're just ruthlessly recombining things without any necessary kind of goal in mind.

And likewise, he wrote this beautiful paper on imagination saying when we imagine something and create something, we're creating it from these specific experiences that we've had and combining it with our general knowledge. But instead of trying to focus it on being accurate and getting at one thing, you're just ruthlessly recombining things without any necessary kind of goal in mind.

And likewise, he wrote this beautiful paper on imagination saying when we imagine something and create something, we're creating it from these specific experiences that we've had and combining it with our general knowledge. But instead of trying to focus it on being accurate and getting at one thing, you're just ruthlessly recombining things without any necessary kind of goal in mind.

I mean, or at least that's one kind of creation.

I mean, or at least that's one kind of creation.

I mean, or at least that's one kind of creation.

I think so. I mean, it's not clear that it is in everyone, but one of the things that's been studied is some patients who have amnesia, for instance, they have brain damage, say, to the hippocampus. And if you ask them to imagine things that are not in front of them, like imagine what could happen after I leave this room, right?

I think so. I mean, it's not clear that it is in everyone, but one of the things that's been studied is some patients who have amnesia, for instance, they have brain damage, say, to the hippocampus. And if you ask them to imagine things that are not in front of them, like imagine what could happen after I leave this room, right?

I think so. I mean, it's not clear that it is in everyone, but one of the things that's been studied is some patients who have amnesia, for instance, they have brain damage, say, to the hippocampus. And if you ask them to imagine things that are not in front of them, like imagine what could happen after I leave this room, right?

They find it very difficult to give you a scenario of what could happen. Or if they do, it would be more stereotyped, like, yes, this would happen. But it's not like they can come up with anything that's very vivid and creative in that sense. And it's partly because when you have amnesia, you're stuck in the present, right?

They find it very difficult to give you a scenario of what could happen. Or if they do, it would be more stereotyped, like, yes, this would happen. But it's not like they can come up with anything that's very vivid and creative in that sense. And it's partly because when you have amnesia, you're stuck in the present, right?

They find it very difficult to give you a scenario of what could happen. Or if they do, it would be more stereotyped, like, yes, this would happen. But it's not like they can come up with anything that's very vivid and creative in that sense. And it's partly because when you have amnesia, you're stuck in the present, right?

Because to get a very good model of the future, it really helps to have episodic memories to draw upon, right? And so that's the basic idea. And in fact, one of the most impressive things, when people started to scan people's brains and ask people to remember past events, what they found was there was this big network of the brain called the default mode network.