20 questions · 8 almanac · 6 findings

Memory and Retention

How memories form, decay, and are strengthened.

Almanac Water Remembers Nothing
  • What claim did Benveniste's 1988 Nature paper make about extremely diluted antibody solutions?
  • What did Benveniste continue trying to do with the 'memory of water' concept after the controversy?
Almanac Water's Memory, Now with an Email Address
  • What was Jacques Benveniste's original 1991 claim about water retaining a memory of dissolved substances?
  • How did Benveniste claim that a homeopathic signal from water could be transmitted digitally over a telephone line?
  • Why did the broader scientific community reject the memory-of-water hypothesis?
Finding Benefits of Spaced Learning Predicted by Re-encoding Mechanisms
  • How does the re-encoding hypothesis explain why spaced practice produces stronger long-term retention than massed practice?
  • Why does allowing a memory trace to partially decay before review improve learning outcomes rather than simply reinforcing an already-active trace?
  • What role do multiple retrieval pathways created during re-encoding play in strengthening memory representations?