A good memory serves us well.  Our recall of directions, people’s names, answers for exam questions – all these and many more useful morsels – helps to position us for success in life.  Most of our present choices and future plans are served in one way or another by our recollections of the past.

Researchers refer to the primary means of achieving this recall as adaptive memory – an evolved system by which we improve our reproductive fitness and odds of survival.  Remembering the past merely to impress others may build self-esteem, but surviving and procreating are critical enough to merit their own unique memory realms.  While your computer’s disk drive may be cluttered with all sorts of trivia, your brain is thankfully a bit more selective.

First introduced by a study published in 2007, the basic methods for studying adaptive memory have since been adopted many times.  Subjects are told to imagine themselves in random scenarios involving survival, moving and pleasantness.  Pop quizzes to evaluate memory recall help researchers pinpoint the so-called survival advantage.  The brain’s development of image processing precedes that of language, and both images and words are classified and saved with similar priority.  If you’ve crammed at the last minute for a final exam, or experienced time pressure while working through a critical problem on the job, you understand the survival advantage.  Our brains are hardwired for self-preservation. <continue reading>