Research

2 of 2 sources

• learningneuroscience

  lecture

  All you need to know about memory

  Koen Vervaeke · 2026 · The Oslo School of Architecture and Design

  Relevance

  • A neuroscientist’s account of how memory emerges from changing connections between neurons, how the hippocampus organises experience, and what helps learning become durable.

  Key findings

  • Neurons connect into large networks, and repetition strengthens those connections — learning is a physical change in the brain, not just an accumulation of information.
  • Stimulating the brain can elicit memories directly, and smell is the strongest and most direct trigger of human memory.
  • The brain prefers multisensory experience: context helps memorisation, and context can be added artificially rather than only found.
  • In-person learning is often more effective than digital learning because it supplies that multisensory context by default.
  • Neuromodulators — adrenaline, serotonin and dopamine — promote learning by strengthening connections in the brain.
  • They are released by attention and arousal, stress and threat response, reward and motivation, and curiosity and exploration; physical activity often activates them too.
  • Familiar learning principles work by recruiting these mechanisms: reward systems, gamification, salience and cues, and emotional tagging.

  neuroscience · memory · learning · neuromodulation

  Vervaeke, K. (2026). All you need to know about memory [Lecture]. The Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

• learning

  article

  The Power of Testing Memory: Basic Research and Implications for Educational Practice

  Henry L. Roediger III, Jeffrey D. Karpicke · 2006 · Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1(3), 181–210

  Key findings

  • The “testing effect”: being tested on material has a greater positive effect on retention than spending the same time studying or re-reading it.
  • In the comparison, one group studied the material twice while another studied it once and then took a test.
  • Retention was then measured at three intervals — five minutes, two days and one week — rather than immediately after studying alone.
  • After five minutes, repeated studying produced better recall than testing; but after two days and one week, the tested group retained substantially more — even though repeated studying had left students more confident they would remember.

  testing effect · retrieval practice · retention · education

  Roediger, H. L., III, & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). The power of testing memory: Basic research and implications for educational practice. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1(3), 181–210. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6916.2006.00012.x

  Open source