There is a poem deeply welded within the reminiscence of the neuroscientist Rodrigo Quian Quiroga (Buenos Aires, 58 years outdated). They are verses by the Argentine author Hilario Ascasubi that he discovered when he was 12 years outdated, whereas having toast and chocolate at residence earlier than going to class: “My mother wanted to kill me because I had not studied it for school… And it was such a stressful situation, because they were going to give me a zero, that I learned it and it stuck with me until today,” he says with fun.
Memories are capricious, unstable, malleable. But they’re us, claims Quian Quiroga, who’s coordinator of the analysis program Neural Mechanisms of Perception and Memory on the Hospital del Mar Research Institut (IMIM): “If they replace my arm, I will continue to be me. If they transplant my heart, too. But if they transplant my brain, it will not be me, it will be the other person with my body. Clearly, identity is linked to the brain, to thoughts and, in particular, to memory.”
The neuroscientist writes about all of this – and about Aristotle, Borges, Maradona or a false orange ball that lives in his reminiscence – in his new ebook, which hits bookstores on January 28: The forgetting machine (Ariel), Quian Quiroga explores the ins and outs of reminiscence, how it’s constructed and to what extent that capability defines us as people.
The researcher is aware of what he’s speaking about. Two a long time in the past, he found the so-called neurons of Jennifer Anistonnerve cells within the hippocampus that reply to particular ideas and associations, ignoring particular particulars. This discovering, key to cementing reminiscence, can be, in his opinion, a elementary piece to elucidate what differentiates us from different animals or synthetic intelligence.
The researcher speaks to EL PAÍS in his workplace within the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park, on the foot of Barceloneta seashore. “It’s surprising how little we remember,” he’ll say time and again.
Ask. More than reminiscence, are we forgetting machines?
Answer. Yes, as a result of, in contrast to different animals, an important attribute of human thought is forgetting. What we do on a regular basis is we choose data, course of it and omit the small print. By doing that, you possibly can concentrate on what is crucial and have a way more superior reasoning capability. Making that abstraction implies forgetting.
P. He says within the ebook that “bringing a memory to consciousness inevitably involves changing it.” Is reminiscence continually reconstructed?
R. Every time you evoke a reminiscence you might be altering it. And change could be brutal. From a reminiscence, maybe you keep in mind sure particular issues and also you consolidate them increasingly; and others that you do not keep in mind as a lot, you allow them forgotten. And that for me is the philosophical paradox, as a result of reminiscence defines id, I’m my reminiscences; however what defines my individual is one thing so unstable…
The mind is the forgetting machine: we neglect rather a lot and keep in mind little or no, solely what pursuits us.”
P. So, do we remember or do we think we remember?
R. The process of remembering exists, it is not an illusion, but memory is, to a large extent, a construction and you use common sense. There are a lot of things that are unconscious inferences: you infer things and, unconsciously, you put together a story using common sense, but you don’t necessarily remember reliably everything that happened.
P. What makes a more rigorous memory?
R. The key is interest, and that is linked to attention. The brain is the forgetting machine: we forget a lot, we remember very little, but the little we remember is what interests us, what we pay attention to.
P. Animals also have memories: a dog knows how to return home, they recognize the owner. What distinguishes our memory?
R. What I propose is that human memory works differently from that of other species. I start with a common sense argument: memory determines your thinking, I think based on how I remember things; and I think the key to human thought is that it is much more abstract than that of any other animal. A monkey or a rat remembers things as they happened; We remember more concepts, we leave aside details and that allows us to make much more advanced associations. The example I give is that Newton’s great genius was not one day writing the formula for gravity, but realizing that the falling apple responds to the same phenomenon as the moon rotating around the Earth. But to make that comparison you need to really abstract, you can’t be thinking if the apple is red or green. You have to leave aside a lot of details and that’s where the genius comes.
P. And the key to everything is in how you build memory?
R. The human brain is not that different from the brain of a chimpanzee. It is bigger, but there are animals that have larger brains than humans and are not more intelligent. I believe that it is not that the brain is different, but that it works differently. And I don’t think it is a coincidence that in humans I find neurons responding to concepts and not to details, while in other animals they always find neurons responding to details and not to concepts.
P. Concept neurons, the famous neurons of Jennifer Anistonhave they not been found in other species?
R. No. And that closes everything for me: we are the only ones who until now have these neurons that represent concepts, abstractions, which implies forgetfulness. This allows me a much higher intelligence capacity than any other animal may have. And I could be wrong, it is not a scientific consensus, but what I am saying is that these neurons are exclusive to human beings and that they are a basis of our intelligence.
P. You reject the idea that memory capacity is associated with intelligence.
R. That is a blunder that is everywhere. The human brain does not seek to remember, it seeks to understand. In other words, what distinguishes us is not our memory capacity, but our ability to understand. An example: I never forget that the Battle of Chacabuco in Argentina against the Spanish was in 1817. And it is not because I have a mnemonic rule, but because I remember that it is a year after the Declaration of Independence. What I do is put a date in context and that’s it, it never goes away again. Aristotle said it: the strongest way you can remember something is to make associations. You generate that loom of memory and it remains very firm. If you have isolated facts, they are lost.
Every time you evoke a memory you are changing it; and change can be brutal”
P. How do we select what we remember?
R. There are things that you repeated so many times that they became automated. And then, because of emotion, which is very clear that is a factor that modifies how deep the memories are.
P. Why don’t we remember anything from our early childhood?
R. It’s called childhood amnesia. And that’s because the hippocampus, which is a key brain area for memory, has not yet developed.
P. He flirts all the time with the idea of what makes us human: memory, language, common sense, those unconscious inferences… What makes us human?
R. It’s the same idea from different angles. What separates us from an animal? The capacity for abstraction. And that is because we have concept neurons, language, we understand… What separates you from a computer? Who has a perfect memory, but does not understand; We forget a lot, but we understand.
P. At the beginning of the book he warns that several questions will be raised that may remain unanswered. What doesn’t neuroscience know?
R. The query that’s nonetheless unanswerable is what an algorithm, a synthetic intelligence, is lacking to get up and be aware.
https://elpais.com/salud-y-bienestar/2026-01-24/rodrigo-quian-quiroga-neurocientifico-el-cerebro-humano-no-busca-recordar-sino-entender.html