Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older: How Memory Shapes our Past

Features

• Explores the nature of autobiographical memory covering everything from first memories, traumatic memories, extraordinary feats of memory to smell, déjà-vu and flashbulb memories
• Draws on a unique combination of historical scholarship, scientific research and everyday experience
• Written in an accessible, original and engaging style

Table of Contents

1. 'Memory is like a dog that lies down where it pleases'
2. Flashes in the dark: first memories
3. Smell and memory
4. Yesterday's record
5. The inner flashbulb
6. 'Why do we remember forwards and not backwards?' 7. The absolute memories of Funes and Sherashevsky
8. The advantages of a defect: the savant syndrome
9. The memory of a grandmaster: a conversation with Ton Sijbrands
10. Trauma and memory: the Demjanjuk case
11. Richard and Anna Wagner: forty-five years of married life
12. 'In oval mirrors we drive around': on experiencing a sense of déjà vu
13. Reminiscences
14. Why life speeds up as you get older
15. Forgetting
16. 'I saw my life flash before me'
17. From memory - Portrait with Still Life.