Memory plays tricks. You remember clearly incidents in your life that never happened, or which someone told you about. In fact if you ever want to know why oral history is not to be trusted, just attend any college or school reunion.
Luckily, though, these “tricks” can also manifest themselves as magically beneficial properties of a complicated neural mechanism. I learned this at a recent “Redefining Learning” conference, when Ewan McIntosh of “Notosh” played a clip that I found to be an almost uncanny insight into the nature of memory.
It shows the moment when pianist Maria João Pires, at a concert in Amsterdam, already seated at the piano in readiness for a Mozart concerto, realises that the orchestra is starting a different concerto from the one she was expecting and has prepared.
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