On Tuesday 28 November 2018 neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire discussed memory failure as part of her Discourse.

Complaints of memory failure are among the most common in clinical settings and these will continue to rise as life expectancy increases. Accordingly, a desire to improve memory and temper the anxiety associated with its loss, represent significant societal concerns. A distributed set of brain regions supports memory and critical among them is the hippocampus, so-called because early anatomists likened it to a seahorse.

In this Discourse, Professor Maguire draws upon evidence from virtual reality, brain imaging and studies of amnesia to show that the consequences of hippocampal damage are even more far-reaching than suspected, not only robbing us of our past, but preventing us from inhabiting our imagination and contemplating the future, changing our sleep, as well as impairing the ability to navigate effectively in the environment, and even altering our perception of the world.

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