Pieces of Light
How the New Science of Memory Illuminates the Stories We Tell About Our Pasts
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Narrated by:
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Gildart Jackson
About this listen
How is it possible to have vivid memories of something that never happened?
How can siblings remember the same event from their childhoods so differently?
Do the selections and distortions of memory reveal a truth about the self?
Why are certain memories tied to specific places?
Does your memory really get worse as you get older?
A new consensus is emerging among cognitive scientists: Rather than possessing fixed, unchanging memories, we create recollections anew each time we are called upon to remember. As the psychologist Charles Fernyhough explains, remembering is an act of narrative imagination as much as it is the product of a neurological process. In Pieces of Light, he eloquently illuminates this compelling scientific breakthrough via a series of personal stories - a visit to his college campus to see if his memories hold up, an interview with his 93-year-old grandmother, conversations with those whose memories are affected by brain damage and trauma - each illustrating memory's complex synergy of cognitive and neurological functions.
Fernyhough guides readers through the fascinating new science of autobiographical memory, covering topics including imagination and the power of sense associations to cue remembering. Exquisitely written and meticulously researched, Pieces of Light brings together science and literature, the ordinary and the extraordinary, to help us better understand the ways we remember - and the ways we forget.
©2012 Charles Fernyhough (P)2013 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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The Self Illusion provides a fascinating examination of how the latest science shows that our individual concept of a self is in fact an illusion. Most of us believe that we possess a self - an internal individual who resides inside our bodies, making decisions, authoring actions and possessing free will. The feeling that a single, unified, enduring self inhabits the body is compelling and inescapable. But that sovereignty of the self is increasingly under threat from science as our understanding of the brain advances.
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Disappointing
- By David R Pinsof on 05-10-12
By: Bruce Hood
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The Ghost in My Brain
- How a Concussion Stole My Life and How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Helped Me Get It Back
- By: Clark Elliott Ph.D.
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1999, Clark Elliott suffered a concussion when his car was rear-ended. Overnight his life changed from that of a rising professor with a research career in artificial intelligence to a humbled man struggling to get through a single day. At times he couldn't walk across a room, or even name his five children. Doctors told him he would never fully recover. After eight years, the cognitive demands of his job, and of being a single parent, finally became more than he could manage.
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Mostly Tedious With Moments of Insight
- By Brent on 01-17-16
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Out of Our Heads
- You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness
- By: Alva Noe
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Alva Noë is one of a new breed - part philosopher, part cognitive scientist, part neuroscientist - who are radically altering the study of consciousness by asking difficult questions and pointing out obvious flaws in the current science. In Out of Our Heads, he restates and reexamines the problem of consciousness, and then proposes a startling solution: Do away with the 200-year-old paradigm that places consciousness within the confines of the brain.
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A bold, yet ultimately unsupported, hypothesis
- By Keith Pyne-Howarth on 01-17-10
By: Alva Noe
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The Ravenous Brain
- How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning
- By: Daniel Bor
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Consciousness is our gateway to experience: it enables us to recognize Van Gogh’s starry skies, be enraptured by Beethoven’s Fifth, and stand in awe of a snowcapped mountain. Yet consciousness is subjective, personal, and famously difficult to examine: philosophers have for centuries declared this mental entity so mysterious as to be impenetrable to science. In The Ravenous Brain, neuroscientist Daniel Bor departs sharply from this historical view, and proposes a new model for how consciousness works.
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Effectively demystifies consciousness
- By Gary on 11-18-12
By: Daniel Bor
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The Brain That Changes Itself
- Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science
- By: Norman Doidge M.D.
- Narrated by: Jim Bond
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries-old notion that the human brain is immutable. Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Norman Doidge, MD, traveled the country to meet both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they've transformed - people whose mental limitations or brain damage were seen as unalterable.
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***MIND BLOWN***
- By Laura Elsasser on 04-04-21
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The Premonition Code
- The Science of Precognition: How Sensing the Future Can Change Your Life
- By: Theresa Cheung, Julia Mossbridge
- Narrated by: Sherry Baines
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
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Best-selling author Theresa Cheung joins forces with cognitive neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge, PhD, Director of the Innovation Lab at The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), to reveal revolutionary new research showing that sensing the future is possible. They also provide practical tools and techniques you can use to develop your own powers of precognition.
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not what I thought.
- By Customer 101 on 04-25-19
By: Theresa Cheung, and others
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Life Before Life
- Children's Memories of Previous Lives
- By: Jim B. Tucker MD, Ian Stevenson - foreword MD
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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This popular examination of research into children's reports of past-life memories describes a collection of 2,500 cases at the University of Virginia that investigators have carefully studied since Dr. Ian Stevenson began the work more than 40 years ago. The children usually begin talking about a past life at the age of two or three and may talk about a previous family or the way they died in a previous life. Their statements have often been found to be accurate for one particular deceased individual, and some children have recognized members of the previous family.
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Heavy on the scientific process
- By Karilyn Schaffer on 02-19-19
By: Jim B. Tucker MD, and others
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Mindwise
- Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want
- By: Nicholas Epley
- Narrated by: Nicholas Epley
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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You are a mind reader, born with an extraordinary ability to understand what others think, feel, believe, want, and know. It's a sixth sense you use every day, in every personal and professional relationship you have. At its best, this ability allows you to achieve the most important goal in almost any life: connecting, deeply and intimately and honestly, to other human beings. At its worst, it is a source of misunderstanding and unnecessary conflict, leading to damaged relationships and broken dreams. How good are you at knowing the minds of others?
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Finally gave up - no real point
- By Thomas on 05-12-14
By: Nicholas Epley
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Babel No More
- The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners
- By: Michael Erard
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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We all learn at least one language as children. But what does it take to learn six languages...or seventy? In Babel No More, Michael Erard, "a monolingual with benefits," sets out on a quest to meet language superlearners and make sense of their mental powers. On the way he uncovers the secrets of historical figures like Italian cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti, who was said to speak seventy-two languages; Emil Krebs, a pugnacious German diplomat, who spoke sixty-eight languages; and Lomb Kat, a Hungarian who taught herself Russian by reading Russian romance novels.
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Heavy on anecdote, light on science
- By S. Yates on 07-15-16
By: Michael Erard
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The Belief Instinct
- The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life
- By: Jesse Bering
- Narrated by: Jesse Bering
- Length: 6 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Why is belief so hard to shake? Despite our best attempts to embrace rational thought and reject superstition, we often find ourselves appealing to unseen forces that guide our destiny, wondering who might be watching us as we go about our lives, and imagining what might come after death. In this lively and masterfully argued new book, Jesse Bering unveils the psychological underpinnings of why we believe.
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engaging and insightful
- By juliagee on 01-02-15
By: Jesse Bering
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The Gift of Adversity
- The Unexpected Benefits of Life's Difficulties, Setbacks, and Imperfections
- By: Norman E. Rosenthal M.D.
- Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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The noted research psychiatrist explores how life's disappointments and difficulties provide us with the lessons we need to become better, bigger, and more resilient human beings. Adversity is an irreducible fact of life. Although we can and should learn from all experiences, both positive and negative best-selling author Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal believes that adversity is by far the best teacher most of us will ever encounter.
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Book ruined by the narrator
- By David C. on 12-07-22
What listeners say about Pieces of Light
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kindle Customer
- 08-19-14
as advertized
I have marginally more than a passing interest in the realm of cognitive psychology, in language sometimes more than memory, but haven't studied it beyond a course or two in undergrad. This has been accessible, and I'd say those less familiar than I could still take away as much as they'd like from the work, but I find my limited background has been useful, if only to provide context or a little familiarity with the terms or experimental procedures.
The discussions are interesting, some unexpected sources like fiction authors and popular artists have appeared, some amusing first- and third- person anecdotes. But the narrator, aside from adopting slight changes if accent for quotes, is just reading aloud much of the time, making it seem/sound drier than I think the topic deserves. He isn't bad at doing so, but that combined with his voice quality (British and soothing), I'm afraid I've been put to sleep more and a few times just in this first half of the book, and had to back up to re-listen to entire sections.
Had a bit of the same problem with the narrator putting me to sleep in the second half... I wasn't as intrigued by as much of the content of part two, lots on amnesia, trauma, and a huge "stories from my grandmother" section. I did like the short chapter on "mind palaces". (And it was wonderfully apropos, have just been watching season 3 of Sherlock.)
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1 person found this helpful
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- Kathi
- 03-21-13
Challenges all you thought you knew about memory!
This book is so thoroughly filled with stories, scientific information and explanations for what this all means to us, that it feels like a daunting task to write an adequate review.
First, may I say it is fascinating! What a great compilation of updated neurological knowledge about memory, the critical role it plays in our everyday lives, but put into easily grasped explanations. No easy task in itself.
Charles Fernyhough draws on his own background in cognitive science, the poetic viewpoint of authors, and individual accounts of memory to discuss his central thesis which is that memory is not an unquestionable imprinted movie of something in the past, but an active mental construction created at the moment is is being recalled, influenced by many factors, including our emotional sense of them, the conditions of the moment, and things that we have specifically attended to.
He explores ways that memory is dependent on factors such as smell, emotion, selective focus that serve our purposes, the meaning we create around them (among other qualities). At one place he refers to them as "imaginative reconstruction." He explores why we fail to remember (amnesia), recall too much (PTSD) or dissociate from particular memories. But largely he speaks to the role of memory in our everyday life. His assumption is, that since memories are constructions, they can be reassembled in different ways, as well.
Why does it matter to us how memories function? Well, the common view is that memories are fixed and immutable. Based on that, we use witnesses in Courts that can make a difference in the future of an accused person. On a less important level perhaps, though, consider how often we operate in ordinary relationships insisting that we remember things perfectly as they were. Ever try that at a family reunion, or have parents or spouses ever gotten into fights because of people recalling things differently? Then there is the traumatic role of memory. A soldier returns from the war with raw memories that just cannot settle, leading to an ever more frequent Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
Memory is behind most of learning and future thinking. It is part of our imagination, and a central part of all our thoughts.
I feel I simply cannot do justice to this powerful (and extremely well-read) work with this short review. However, I do feel confident to say that we should all pay attention to this information because it will change the way you think about memory forever. Fernyhough has done an extremely impressive job of assembling a great deal of recent research to help us understand the role and function of memory in our lives. This has great implications for many ways that we have made assumptions about what memories "are" and how they actually function in our lives. It is a great contribution to the field.
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20 people found this helpful
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- S. Yates
- 06-28-16
Interesting, but a lot is still unknown
Any additional comments?
Illuminating look at memory, how we think it works, and how incredibly malleable and ever-changing it is. Some of this material I have seen discussed in other books (on topics ranging from social science to medicine to criminal justice), but this cover various aspects of memory under one cover. Chapters include, among others, discussions of how trauma impacts memory, how memory is formed, childhood amnesia (the general forgetting that many of us have of our very early years), flash-bulb memories, and how aging impacts memory and time perception. Fernyhough, as a psychologist, also does an excellent job mixing his own personal stories of memory with what science has started to reveal about memory.
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- Margaret
- 03-22-13
My ulterior motive
I admit, I read this book with an ulterior motive. I have kind of a "self help" interest in memory and its quirks. I have this idea that if I can polish up my past (and I don't see why not, I'm the keeper of it, after all) then it should - in countless subconscious ways - improve my present.
This book gives my ulterior motive hope because, as the book explains, memory is really a confabulation of past experiences, stories and present hopes and attitudes - not an unchanging video of the mind. Charles Fernyhough combines the latest and greatest of memory research with personal stories (like how he's attempting to give his children vivid memories of his father, who died before they were born.) He covers common memory glitches - like how siblings remember the same event, but happening to different people.
(I have this situation with my sister. I cut my finger on a peanut butter can - yes, peanut butter used to come in cans - and had to get stitches. She remembers the incident as well, but thinks it was her finger that was cut. The weird thing is that we both have a scar on that finger.)
I don't know if this book will grip those without personal gain in the back of their minds, but I enjoyed it. Recommend.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Chester Chellman
- 03-25-13
too anecdotal
The stories are lovely, and he seems to have a nice family, but this is about 1% science & the rest story-telling
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6 people found this helpful