How a single moment becomes part of you.
Built on Lisa Genova's science of remembering
and Jeff Hawkins' Thousand Brains theory.
Each dot is one second of your life. You take in far more than you can keep, and almost all of it is gone within a minute.
"I can't recall a single detail from yesterday's commute."
Your brain is always guessing what comes next. When the guess is right, the moment slides through and only deepens the grooves it already has. The golden flash is a surprise. A guess missed, so the brain tags that moment: keep this one.
"I still remember the exact moment I got that phone call."
The tagged moment lands here, in a part called the hippocampus. It glues the pieces into one: what you saw, where you were, how it felt. One moment, one memory.
"One song, and suddenly I was back in that summer."
This sheet is the outer layer of your brain. Thousands of tiny units, each holding its own copy of the world. When you try to remember, they all vote on what happened.
"It's on the tip of my tongue..."
The faint shape behind is the old version. Every time you remember, you pull the moment apart and save a fresh copy over it. The memory you trust most is the one you have rewritten the most.
"I've told this story so many times, I'm no longer sure what really happened."
Almost all of today will be gone by tomorrow. That is on purpose. Forgetting clears the noise, and the little that stays becomes the lens you see the next moment through.
"I forgot almost everything, yet somehow it made me who I am."
Hover the parts of the machine to see what they are.