Total Recall: Memory Requires More than the Sum of Its Parts

People who are so-called simultagnosics have a problem with a crease in their brains that links the top and bottom of the parietal lobe. Because of damage to this crease, called the intraparietal sulcus, simultagnosics cannot actively perceive the different properties of an object. If you don't have an actively functioning intraparietal sulcus and you are looking at a red car moving down the street, you can't actively perceive the color and the movement, explains neurobiologist Melina Uncapher of the University of California, Irvine. You can only attend to the color or the movement. And now a new study led by Uncapher has revealed that this crease also plays a pivotal role in tying the separate strands of an event or object into a fully-woven memory.