Last week, we were talking about Oxford philosopher Victoria Trumbull’s essay arguing that memories are not “stored” in the brain. Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor notes that the image of storing and erasing memories is popular due to computer technology but not relevant to human memory.

Where are our memories then?

Memory is the ability to retain and recall images. They do not take up space in the brain the way boxes take up space in an attic. Your memory of your childhood dog’s face is part of that ability, not a photo in an album.

Egnor likens retaining images in memory to the ability to play chess. You learn the rules, the moves; you play the game well or badly. Your ability, like your memory, could decline with brain damage or age; you could lose it altogether. But memories and skills are better seen as processes. Regions of the brain work together to make things happen. Where does one “store” a process?

A song might capture the immaterial nature of memory. In Canada, an iconic folk song is “Four Strong Winds” (1961) by Ian Tyson. (1933–2022). He said that he wrote it in 20 minutes, thinking about a girl he remembered.

It’s been played and recorded countless times: radio, TV, records, tape decks, YouTube, sheet music, and live performances by countless artists, including Neil Young and Joan Baez, and John Denver.

Many Canadians (and others) can hum it or plonk it out. They may instantly recognize lines like “I’ll go out to Alberta, weather’s good there in the fall” and “I’ll look for you if I’m ever back this way.”

So now, the question…

Where exactly is the song located? It lives in memory, human and recorded, in many forms. But it occupies no spatial location. The pianist plays it and then leaves the piano.

What happened to the song? Well nothing. It certainly didn’t go away.

Could “Four Strong Winds” be wiped out if all records are expunged and everyone who remembers it dies? Yes; that has happened to countless musical and dramatic works from the ancient world. But what is expunged is the ability to see, hear, and (re)create the work. No single physical copy was itself the work. No, the work is an immaterial idea that can be expressed in many forms, all transient.

Seeing memory as a function of the brain is reasonable but it is not a series of overstuffed file cabinets; it is a process of retaining and accessing images that are immaterial in themselves.

Some interesting facts about memory

● Learning new things changes our brain wiring (circuitry). That’s not just a figure of speech:

Such modifications are orchestrated across trillions of synapses — the connections between individual nerve cells, called neurons — where brain communication takes place. In an intricately coordinated process, new information causes certain synapses to get stronger with new data while others grow weaker. Neuroscientists who have closely studied these alterations, known as “synaptic plasticity,” have identified numerous molecular processes causing such plasticity.

ScienceDaily William J. Wright, Nathan G. Hedrick, Takaki Komiyama. Distinct synaptic plasticity rules operate across dendritic compartments in vivo during learning. Science, 2025; 388 (6744): 322 DOI: 10.1126/science.ads4706 The paper is open access.

● Music can help people with dementia recover memories:

It’s not just any music that has a regenerative effect on the brain, though. Familiar and favourite music has been shown to have the biggest impact on the way we feel, and is closely linked with memory and emotions. This is because listening to our favourite songs releases feel-good hormones that give us a sense of pleasure. Curated music playlists of favourite music could be the key in helping us deal with the stress of everyday life. This is relevant to Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia because researchers have discovered that parts of the brain linked with musical memories are less affected by these conditions than other areas of the brain. This explains why memories and experiences that are linked to favourite music are often preserved for people with such conditions.

Rebecca Atkinson, Ming-Hung Hsu, “Music and dementia: researchers are still making discoveries about how songs can help sufferers,” The Conversation, October 10, 2024 (Links omitted.)

● Some people can indeed remember everything that happens to them:

… a small number of people—only a handful of cases have been described in scientific literature—have access to such a wealth of autobiographical details that they can link specific events to any given date on the calendar.

“In these individuals, known as hyperthymesics, memories are carefully indexed by date. Some will be able to describe in detail what they did on July 6, 2002, and experience again the emotions and sensations of that day,” explains Valentina La Corte, a research professor at the Memory, Brain, and Cognition Laboratory at Paris Cité University.

Marie Simon, “Inside the Minds That Never Forget: Exploring Hyperthymesia”,” Neuroscience News, August 28, 2025. La Corte, V., Piolino, P., & Cohen, L. (2025). Autobiographical hypermnesia as a particular form of mental time travel. Neurocase, 31(4), 188–192. https://doi.org/10.1080/13554794.2025.2537950

But it is not necessarily a blessing: “According to case reports in the scientific literature and accounts in the media, hyperthymesia is often described as a distressing ability: painful, even traumatic memories can accumulate uncontrollably. Some individuals also feel overwhelmed by useless anecdotal information.”

When we consider that alternative, forgetting most of what we have been through may be a blessing.