Science on Screen®: Remember Sammy Jankis – Memory, Executive Function, and the Brain

SCIENCE ON SCREEN® PRESENTS:

What happens when the brain can no longer form new memories? How do we make decisions, construct a sense of self, or navigate the world when the systems that anchor experience begin to fail?

Christopher Nolan’s MEMENTO offers one of contemporary American cinema’s most compelling explorations of memory and cognition. Told in reverse chronological order, Nolan places viewers inside the fractured perception of Leonard Shelby, a man suffering from anterograde amnesia who relies on notes, photographs, and tattoos to impose order on a reality he can no longer retain. In doing so, MEMENTO transforms narrative structure into something more than a stylistic device: it becomes an experiential model of cognitive disruption.

Following the screening, Dr. Joel Bish (Associate Professor of Psychology, Ursinus College) will explore the neuroscience underlying the film’s central premise. Drawing on research in cognitive neuroscience, he will examine how memory is formed, stored, and retrieved, as well as the role of executive function in guiding behavior when memory systems break down. The talk will also consider how individuals compensate for cognitive impairment, and what MEMENTO reveals (and obscures) about the relationship between memory, perception, and identity.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Joel P. Bish, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Ursinus. He received his B.S. in Psychology from York College of Pennsylvania, his M.S. in Experimental Psychology from Towson University in Baltimore, and his Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

From 2003 to 2005, Dr. Bish was an NIH National Research Service Award Fellow at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In 2005, he joined the faculty of Ursinus College in the Psychology Department and served as the Coordinator for the College’s Neuroscience major from 2005 until July of 2014.