How We Remember

Episodic memory proves essential for daily function, allowing us to remember where we
parked the car, what time we walked the dog, or what a friend said earlier. In How We
Remember, Michael Hasselmo draws on recent developments in neuroscience to present a new
model describing the brain mechanisms for encoding and remembering such events as spatiotemporal
trajectories. He reviews physiological breakthroughs on the regions implicated in episodic memory,
including the discovery of grid cells, the cellular mechanisms of persistent spiking and resonant
frequency, and the topographic coding of space and time. These discoveries inspire a theory for
understanding the encoding and retrieval of episodic memory not just as discrete snapshots but as a
dynamic replay of spatiotemporal trajectories, allowing us to "retrace our steps" to recover a
memory. In the main text of the book, he presents the model in narrative form, accessible to
scholars and advanced undergraduates in many fields. In the appendix, he presents the material in a
more quantitative style, providing mathematical descriptions appropriate for advanced undergraduates
and graduate students in neuroscience or engineering.