11 Implicit Memory: The Thing That's Running Your Life

Let me begin with a quote by Daniel Siegel, who is a neuroscientist that has had a profound influence on how I understand uh memory and therapy and story and trauma. And this is what I'm uh Siegel says about the brain. The brain is an anticipation machine that shapes ongoing perception by what it automatically expects based on prior experience. The brain is an anticipation machine. It it its job is to anticipate whatever is gonna come next.

And that an act of anticipat anticipating shapes what you then perceive in the next nanosecond and it anticipates based on what it expects given your prior experience. In other words, your prior experiences prime the brain to anticipate something familiar next. And that act of anticipating what is familiar in turn shapes your perception of what you are presently experiencing. This is the core of implicit memory. Implicit memory tells us what to expect around every bend. So memory is

is in the way in which a past experience affects how the mind will function in the future. That's the the simplest and and best way to define memory. It's the way in which a past experience affects how the mind will function in the future. By the way, uh it's important to note that a memory is not a thing. I I used to think that a memory was like a bunch of neurons that got together and they got put into a bin.

And so you had a bin for Christmas memories and a bin for memories related to soccer or a a bin for first grade. this idea uh was um taken up by the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. If you've seen that, it's an excellent film. And but the idea behind it is essentially flawed in terms of how the brain actually operates and stores memory. Th the idea in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was that you could go into the brain and you could find every memory in w for

Joel Barrish, the character played by uh Jim Carey. The idea is you could go into his brain and find every memory in which his girlfriend Clementine appeared, and you could delete that memory. You could essentially delete the Manila file folder that contained all the memories of Clementine. But a memory is not a thing. It it has no mass. It is not located anywhere. You can't go find the two hundred neurons that represent your memory of say falling off a horse when you were seven years old.

and then cut them out of the brain so that you no longer have a memory of falling off the horse. That that's not how memory works. There are no storage folders, there are no bins. Okay, so how does it work? Well h here is a a quote from a phenomenal book called A General Theory of Love that explains uh a lot about memory. And this is what the authors say. Cardiac muscle fibers are objects, but the heartbeat they generate is a physiologic event.

A heartbeat has no mass and occupies no space. And so they're going to relate. A heartbeat to memory. They continue, a memory is another bodily process produced by physical objects, neurons, but itself as immaterial as the soul. If a heart beats once and then rests for a minute, the heartbeat has not gone someplace. Memories are the heartbeats of the nervous system. They are not objects. They do not travel.

So I I know that is complex and you really don't need to understand that to understand implicit memory, but I I I think it is helpful context.

Mm back to implicit versus explicit memory. The the main point I'm wanting to make today is that implicit memory runs your life and it is far more important uh when it comes to how we actually live our lives than explicit memory. th the ability to create explicit memories, such as you know your memory of your um sixteenth birthday party, or a a memory you had of when you got an award in college or

a state championship sporting event. Th these are explicit memories of events. Uh your memory of the first car that you owned. Uh those are explicit memories. The ability to create explicit memories does not develop until around 18 months of age or even slightly later. But implicit memory. is operational before you come out of the womb. And so point number one, everything you learn in the first eighteen months of life and even before you're born.

is recorded in implicit, not explicit memory. You have no ability to record explicit memories until around the age eighteen months, two years, which is why you have no memories. You know, you think you have no memory of the first, you know, when you're six months old. You can't remember anything that happened when you were six months old. Uh what we're gonna find out today is that you actually remember everything that happened when you were six months old, uh, but it's implicit, not explicit.

So here's the key attribute of recording something in explicit memory. You have to be paying attention to record something in explicit memory. you have to, for example, be studying for a math test with your conscious attention on the math that you're learning. When you're paying attention to what's happening, you are able to record explicit memories. However, Implicit memories are created whether you are paying attention or not.

Implicit memories are recorded automatically without your awareness. You don't think to yourself, I need to remember this. You just remember it automatically without thinking about it and without realizing that you are creating a memory at all. Implicit memory does not require focal attention. It doesn't require a remote. require conscious awareness. You don't have to be paying attention.

So an example is given in the book A General Theory of Love about a man named Mr. Underwood who lost all of his explicit memory. He was then taught how to braid, how to take three strands of string or yarn or whatever and braid them together. And after he had mastered braiding, the people who were doing this experiment asked him, Do you know how to braid?

He, of course, had to reply no, because he lacks the ability to form explicit memories. So he doesn't have the ability to remember learning the the event of learning how to braid. So he says, No, I don't know how to braid, which was true for him. However, when three strips of cloth were placed in his hands, he wove them together immediately. In other words, he formed a memory of how to braid without realizing it.

any ability to form explicit memories, but his implicit memory was fully operational.

So this illustration shows us the the second key point to know about implicit memory and it's simply this when you recall an implicit memory you do not have the sensation that you are remembering something. So when you're asked to remember, say your first grade teacher, for example, you you think back and you try and remember and if you can, you remember that you had Mrs. Moskowitz, that was my first grade teacher. y y and you have the sensation of recalling

Mrs. Moskowitz, I can see your face, I can see the classroom. But as I recall that, I have a sensation in my body of I'm remembering something. I'm thinking back in time and I'm remembering something. And this sensation always accompanies the retrieval of explicit memory. However, when you retrieve an implicit memory, there is no sensation of recall.

You don't have that internal sense that you are remembering something. In other words, when you remember an implicit memory, you're not aware that you're remembering something from the past. Therefore, it feels present because you don't have the sense that this is in the past. You don't have that sense of thinking back to, okay, that was first grade. but you still remember and so it feels like the memory is happening in the present. So here's an example to make this

abstract and difficult concept, easier to understand. Suppose you and your friend are walking in the park and suddenly a cocker spaniel starts racing towards you both. And immediately your body floods with fear. However, you have no sense of, oh, this is because I'm remembering that I was attacked by a dog when I was five. Yet that implicit memory of being attacked by a dog when you were five is precisely what is causing your body to feel fear.

Your friend, who had a friendly dog growing up, has a very different reaction. Without feeling any fear at all, she bends down on one knee, opens her arms to the to to hug the incoming cocker spaniel. Now, why do the two of you have such different reactions? Implicit memory is why.

Implicit memory is the reason you have a very different reaction from your friend to the exact same event. Her implicit memory told her that dogs are friendly and fun, while yours told you that they are dangerous and frightening. Your implicit memory tells you how the world works and what you can expect from the world. another illustration. If you were an art history major in college, you would know the difference between a Matisse and a Van Gogh.

And if you were presented with two paintings that you had never seen, one of which was a Matisse and one of which was a Van Gogh, you would instantaneously be able to tell which was which. Even if you had never seen either painting before. Now, how could you possibly know that a particular painting was a Van Gogh if you had never seen the painting before? Implicit memory. Implicit memory is how you know as you look at both paintings.

you unconsciously and automatically remember all the Van Gogh paintings that you have seen over the course of your life. And these implicit memories tell you what a van Gogh feels like. That's the key word. Implicit memory is about the feel of things. And so you have a sense inside of what a Van Gogh feels like, what it looks like. And you know that a Matisse is very has a very different look and feel.

Now, suppose that for the first eighteen years of your life, every painting that you saw was painted by Van Gogh. First 18 years of your life, you never saw anything. Any painting that you saw was always a van Gogh. So you never saw any abstract paintings. You never saw any realist paintings. You never saw any modern art. Just Van Gogh, over and over Van Gogh. Now, as an eighteen year old, you would not think this is what Van Gogh looks like. You would think this is what paintings look like.

This is what paintings look like.

This is precisely what happens with your understanding of relationships, with your expectations for relationships. Your brain summarizes all your experiences of relating with your mother and father, and instead of thinking, This is what a relationship with my mom is like or with my dad is like, you think This is what relationships are like. And when we leave home and set out into the world, we carry within us a storehouse of implicit memory.

Those memories tell us what to expect around every bench Now you're you're probably realizing that th this is I an oversimplification because of course when you're two, three, four, five, y you're having experiences of relationship with other people besides your mom and dad. And all of those experiences become part of your implicit memory of how relationships work, how they feel, what they're like. However, your relationship with your parents wields a disproportionately strong influence.

on your implicit memory because they are the two closest people to you and they are the two people that have been there from the very beginning. And so we continue to record implicit memories throughout our lives. As adults, we're still recording implicit memories, however, experiences in adulthood have a much weaker influence on the brain.

Childhood experiences create the foundation of our brain because that's when the brain is growing and developing. And so Childhood experiences create the foundation of our brain and later experiences merely make adjustments to that foundation. Back to Daniel Siegel on implicit memory. He says this. What's crucial to understand about implicit memory is that implicit memories cause us to form expectations about the way the world works.

based on our previous experiences. Implicit memory creates something called priming, in which the brain readies itself to respond in a certain way. The brain is an anticipation machine that shapes ongoing perception by what it automatically expects based on prior experience. Did you hear that word priming? implicit memory is the reason we experience this thing called priming. And priming simply refers to the brain's readying itself to respond in a certain way.

and it readies itself based on what it has learned about the world from prior experiences. With implicit memory, you never forget. You can forget explicit memories. Implicit memories, you never forget them. You never forget how to ride a bike, for example. Now let me make this real practical.

Do you ever feel intense emotion that you know is quote unquote more than the situation calls for? You know, perhaps you think of these experiences as overreactions, or you've been told that you're overreacting. For example, someone asks you a seemingly innocuous question and suddenly you feel really angry or you feel anxious or you feel ashamed. These intense emotional reactions are not over-reactions at all.

They are directly proportional to how your brain takes the other person's words and interprets them through the grid of your implicit memory. Something in the other person's tone of voice or their facial expression or their choice of words. has brought to mind memories, albeit implicit memories, of deeply significant past experiences that were marked by a similar tone of voice or a similar facial expression or a similar choice of words. And you are remembering these experiences, but

Because these experiences are stored in implicit memory, you're not aware that you are remembering anything at all. You have no sensation of recall. And so you're not aware that you're remembering something. In other words, it's not that you're too sensitive or that you're a drama queen. You simply have a brain with a treasure trove of implicit memory.

So when you are making a mountain out of a molehill, for example, Uh as far as your implicit memory is concerned, which means as far as your neurons are concerned, it actually is a mountain. It may not objectively be a mountain to the outside world, to an external observer. But in your brain, in your subjective experience, which is the only thing you have, it's the only way to experience the world is subjectively, in your subjective experience, it's a mountain.

It's a mountain. And there's no way physiologically to experience it any differently than the way your implicit memory is triggering you to experience it.

Now, y you may be wondering, okay, if implicit memory is so important, how in the world do you come to know what is stored in your implicit memory? And one answer is your body. Your body holds the answer to what is stored in your implicit memory. The sensations in your body always tell the truth. They never lie. So as you go through your day, you have an internal bodily experience that is constantly in flux. It's known as affect or arousal. Your inner bodily experience.

whether it's kind of feeling numb or whether it's feeling panicked or whether it's feeling moderately anxious, your inner bodily experience is constantly in flux. the surefire way to begin to understand what is stored in your implicit memory is to pay attention to when you feel shifts in your bodily experience, that is shifts in your level of arousal.

So if you are in a meeting or you are in a conversation with your partner and all of a sudden something is said or a facial expression is read and you suddenly experience a shift. In your affect inside. Maybe you get a little anxious all of a sudden. That is telling you that implicit memory has just been activated. So when do you find yourself going numb or shutting down? When when do you find yourself kind of getting a little panicky or anxious or becoming fearful?

Situations that evoke strong emotional responses in us make implicit memory known. They tell you what is stored in your implicit memory. So when you have a strong reaction to something, will you be curious rather than condemning? Condemnation says, What's wrong with me? Why did I react like that? Why did I just say that? Why did I get so upset over that? Curiosity says, Wow, that was a big reaction. I wonder what implicit memory is behind that. I wonder what that is touching in me.

Questions like this, rather than accusations against yourself, will make known to you those parts of your story that have had the most influence over the shaping of your brain. over your implicit memory, over your neurons which are anticipating what will happen around every bend. implicit memory is the reason you have had such a Hard time telling yourself truths that don't seem to make their way into your quote unquote heart.

Uh let me translate that. So you you you know y you've heard or you've had this sense of you know I know that the cocker spaniel is safe. Or I know that God loves me, but those cognitive truths, you might say, you can't get them from your head to your heart. Let me translate that neurobiologically.

What you're saying is you can't get something into implicit memory. You can't get it to change your implicit memory. You can't tell yourself It's okay that Cocker Spaniel is safe and have it change your bodily response of fear. Or you can't tell yourself God loves me and have that change your daily experience of anxiety about losing your job. The reason for that is because it is very hard to use words or cognitive thinking to change what is in s what is inscribed in implicit memory.

How do you change implicit memory then? That's the obvious question. And the answer is experience. experiences. So for example, A man is riding a bicycle, but the bicycle has been jerry-rigged so that when you turn the handlebars to the right, the wheel turns to the left. And when you turn the handlebars to the left, the wheel turns to the right. Now this Crazy bicycle is very frustrating to learn how to ride, as you can imagine. Why? Because you are trying to revise implicit memory.

It took uh the man who did this experiment three weeks to Three weeks to learn to train his brain. To train to revise his implicit memory to the point that he could navigate a rather simple course going through and around orange cones on this crazy bicycle. Now cognitively, you know, cerebrally, cortically, he knew all you have to do is when you want to go right, turn to the left.

And when you want to go left, just turn the handlebars to the right. This is not complex. And he knew that. And he knew it in five seconds. But his implicit memory is what determines how he rides a bike. And it took three weeks of trying over and over and over, of practicing. To get to the point when he could ride a bicycle at the level of the kindergartner next door. So the way you change implicit memory is by having experience after experience after experience of healthy relationships.

And hopefully, for those of you that are in therapy, that's what therapy is for you. That's what the therapeutic relationship is for you. It's one of, hopefully not the only, but it's one of. The experiences in your life that is repeatedly a positive, healthy relational experience. So let me finish by Reading Dan Siegel's definition again of memory or of the brain. The brain is an anticipation machine. that shapes ongoing perception by what it automatically expects based on prior experience.

And it is implicit memory that tells us what to expect. around every bend. It is implicit memory that forms the basis for what we are anticipating will happen next. Implicit memory. It's the thing that is running your life. Thank you so much for listening. Hey, if you liked this episode and think someone else would also, please share it. You can do that right now from your device. There's a share button right on your phone.