Overview

• Boston University researchers report that emotional, surprising, or rewarding experiences strengthen memory for otherwise mundane, connected events.
• Across roughly 648 participants and 10 studies, items encountered after a salient event were remembered better in proportion to that event’s emotional impact.
• Memories from before a salient moment were rescued when they shared high-level features with it, such as visual similarity, indicating prioritization is not driven by timing alone.
• The enhancement waned when the secondary items carried their own emotional weight, suggesting the brain favors stabilizing fragile, nonemotional memories.
• Authors highlight potential applications in education and clinical contexts, while emphasizing that real-world interventions remain to be tested.