Psychology, Neuroscience, and Memory in Proust

In Search of Lost Time is a work of memory exploration. In writing it, Proust illuminated much of how we experience memory and preceded the scientific community in its understanding of how memory works. This the argument Jonah Lehrer makes in the chapter on Proust in his book, Proust was a Neuroscientist.

For a long time, scientists searched for an engram, a location where all memories are stored. There was speculation that the hippocampus filled this role. However, it turns out that the hippocampus does not store memories but rather acts as an index for consolidating and retrieving memories. Memories are not separate from the rest of the brain but are the reactivation of the sensory experience from the original experience. When people in fMRI (a brain scan tool) are asked to recall something that has just happened, the same areas of the brain are activated as in the original experience, although somewhat less intensely. The first few times an individual recalls something, the hippocampus will cue the relevant sensations. Eventually, that sensory experience will form connections such that it no longer depends on the hippocampus for activation.

Proust understands and writes about the limitations and failings of memory. He claims that our intelligence often reworks and alters our experience. The Narrator discusses how his recollection of Albertine changes as “the beauty mark, which I had remembered on her cheek, then on her chin, came to rest forever on her upper lip, just under her nose” (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower). This is illustrative of how details are often falsely remembered but retain our confidence. Proust accurately places some of the blame for these failings in recollection. He claims that “we slide gradually down memory’s gentle slope; and before long, without realizing it, we have gone a long way from what we really felt” (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower).

Research has shown that each time a memory is reconsolidated after being recalled there is potential for inaccuracies, or false information to leak in. When people are asked to complete a memory task after subtle false suggestions are made about details, people will often consolidate those falsities along with the memory. The next time they recall it, they will believe that it is part of the original memory. This understanding of the inaccuracies of memory is fairly recent and is still being explored, especially in terms of its implications for witness testimonies. How we can get people to recall event without injecting falsities is important if we want to continue relying on memory in court cases and other important decisions.

Lehrer’s main discussion of where Proust’s writing on memory precedes the scientific community focuses on involuntary memories and how they endure. Lehrer claims that the “mind is in a constant state of reincarnation” but memories often endure, so there must be something strong and constant that maintain them. Lehrer suggests that Proust’s involuntary memories are due to prions. Prions stabilize synapses (the connection between two neurons), allowing the connection running between the different sensory experiences of a single memory to be maintained without constant activation. The first time a synapse is activated, for example when one eats a madeleine soaked in tea, the prion is activated. It will perpetually produce the proteins necessary to maintain the connection between the two neurons without any outside help.

This keeps the pattern of that memory alive so the next time one tastes the tea-soaked-madeleine, that sensation is still connected to Aunt Leonie and Combray. Proust puts a lot of stock in these memories claiming that recalling these memories has the power to give him, “the joy which was like a certainty and which sufficed… to make death a matter of indifference to me” (Time Regained). Whether these memories are less susceptible to the inaccuracies of other memories is not know. Regardless, these memories prompt The Narrator’s decision to commit to writing his novel. If we accept that Proust is also writing about his own decision to write In Search of Lost Time, then we may owe this work, at least in part, to prions and the role they play in keeping our memories for us.