New Books in Neuroscience: Ciara Greene and Gillian Murphy, "Memory Lane: The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember" (Princeton UP, 2025)

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Listen here to New Books in Neuroscience, a podcast from New Books Network featuring interviews with neuroscientists about their new books. For more information, visit New Books in Neuroscience.

Originally released: April 3, 2025

Today I’m speaking with Ciara Greene, co-author with Gillian Murphy of the new book, Memory Lane: The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember (Princeton UP, 2025). Ciara is associate professor in the School of Psychology at University College Dublin, where she leads the Attention and Memory Laboratory. The scientific study of human memory has become even more relevant in an age where we have every technology under the Sun to alleviate us of the need to remember. It makes sense that we worry about losing the ability to remember today, but even Socrates 2,500 years ago lamented that the recently invented technology of writing harmed people’s ability to remember. Memory not only connects us with our past, but it instructs us in how we should behave, what we should believe, and underlies the patterns of our everyday thoughts. Memory Lane takes readers behind the most up-to-date scientific research on memory. How memory actually works versus how we think it works is a wide chasm, and Ciara and Gillian are excellent guides for bridging the gap.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

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