Memorability: How what we see influences what we remember

Everyone has a unique set of individual experiences that make up their memories. However, we all also continuously encounter some items that are incredibly easy to remember and others that are too easy to forget. Indeed, recent work has found that the intrinsic memorability of an image can be quantified and used to predict memory behavior broadly across people, despite our diverse experiences. In this chapter, I describe memorability as an intrinsic stimulus property from the perspectives of psychology, neuroscience, and real-world applications. First, I compare past and new perspectives on memorability as a means to quantify an image. I discuss how it relates to other stimulus attributes and other cognitive phenomena such as attention and cognitive control, and show that memorability effects are largely distinct. Next, I describe the current understanding based on recent neuroimaging research of how, where, and when the brain distinguishes memorable versus forgettable images. Finally, I explore real-world applications of memorability in clinical and computational modeling domains, and present potential avenues for future exploration.