The way a story is told shapes how we remember it.

Imagine a friend telling you about their weekend, or perhaps you're telling someone else about it, or even reminiscing about it yourself. You could describe the sensory details you experienced, like the cool breeze, the colors of the sunset, or the aroma of coffee; or you could focus more on the thoughts and emotions the experience evoked, such as feeling free, recalling old dreams you'd half-forgotten, or noticing a shift within you. While both accounts describe the same objective facts, the way you present them completely affects how you remember them later.

A recent study led by psychologist Signy Sheldon of McGill University in Quebec, Canada, suggests that this difference is not anecdotal. The way we tell or listen to stories determines how the brain stores them. According to this work, which has been published in Journal of Neuroscience, Narrating a lived experience by emphasizing sensory or emotional details activates different brain networks, and these differences influence the retention of essential information in the story.

To demonstrate this, researchers created fictional stories about everyday situations, such as shopping or traveling, that shared the same central events, and told them to a group of volunteers. Although the stories were the same, some volunteers heard them with added conceptual details, focusing on thoughts and emotions, while others heard them with added perceptual details, focusing on physical sensations, such as sounds, images, colors, and smells. While both groups of volunteers listened to these stories, the researchers recorded their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Afterward, they assessed how much information each volunteer had recalled.

The results were clear. Both types of narration allowed for recalling the central events of the stories, but they involved different neural pathways. When the narration prioritizes conceptual content, neural networks related to emotional interpretation and symbolic processing are activated, especially the connections between the hippocampus, the area of the brain that manages memory, and the so-called default mode network, which is primarily responsible for coordinating internal thought processes, such as the introduction.

In contrast, stories focused on perceptual details more intensely activate sensory areas of the brain, such as the visual, auditory, and somatosensory cortex, associated with vision, hearing, and tactile perception respectively, and the parietal and temporal regions, which are involved in the integration and processing of information. In other words, the brain appears to have two memory pathways for storing memories, and the narrative we use to tell others or to ourselves about a story or event activates one or the other.

Applications in education

This discovery not only expands the knowledge that was available about the neural mechanisms of memory and recollection, It also has practical implications for education, communication, and everyday life. For example, if we want someone to remember the emotions, reflections, or meaning of a story, a conceptual narrative is best. However, if we want them to remember visual or sensory details, a narrative rich in perceptions might be more effective. This idea can transform how we explain content in the classroom or narrate any event; or how we make new proposals, for example, in the fields of marketing or politics. An abstract concept can be made more understandable by using emotional metaphors, while practical content can be presented by focusing more on concrete sensory experiences.

There might even be generational differences. The authors of this study suggest that older people tend to activate the conceptual pathway more, while younger people may lean more towards the perceptual pathway. This indicates that adapting one's communication style to the receiver is not just a matter of aesthetics, but can optimize information retention.

In any case, we shouldn't think of memory as a camera that records reality, but rather as a painter who decides in each instance what to highlight from that reality, how to integrate the details, and how to reconstruct the experience. Both approaches are equally valid, useful, and complementary. In fact, combining both can be the most effective way to ensure that an experience is remembered intensely and meaningfully. This explains why some stories are etched in our memory with almost sensory clarity, while others can alter who we are.