Researchers Say Memories Can Be Relived, Not Just Recalled

Have you ever wanted to relive one of your most treasured memories? Not just think about the memory, but actually relive it? According to new research coming out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you can.

Neuroscientists at MIT have discovered that memories are physical and can be reactivated. This means that instead of just recalling a memory, scientists can now help you reconstruct them artificially by activating certain parts of your brain.

This reactivation theory isn’t new — it was just never proved before now. In an early 1900s experiment on epilepsy patients, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield found that if he stimulated certain parts of the hippocampus — the part of the brain in charge of short and long-term memories — some of his patients would vividly recall past events.