Charan Ranganath

In the mid-1990s he trained as a clinical psychologist at Northwestern University, studying memory retrieval in Ken Paller’s lab; after a clinical internship in 1999 he chose research, did postdoctoral work with Mark D’Esposito, and joined UC Davis in 2002.⁠[1]

In October 2012 he and Maureen Ritchey published a review in Nature Reviews Neuroscience that drew on studies in humans, monkeys and rats to propose that the perirhinal cortex and the parahippocampal–retrosplenial cortex are core parts of two separable large-scale cortical networks supporting different kinds of memory and cognition.⁠[2]

In April 2013 he received a $40,000 Guggenheim Fellowship, planning a sabbatical at the University of Cambridge and a book on memory for the general public.⁠[1]

On March 5, 2014, he and graduate student Liang-Tien Hsieh and colleagues published a Neuron study finding that hippocampal activity patterns for the same image depend on the sequence in which it appears; he said that for the hippocampus, context is critical, not content.⁠[3]

In August 2014 he received a five-year, $2.6 million National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Defense to study how brain oscillations relate to activity in the cortex and hippocampus, with the aim of improving memory assessment, learning and the rehabilitation of soldiers with brain injuries.⁠[4]

On October 2, 2014, he, as principal investigator, published a study in Neuron with Matthias Gruber and Bernard Gelman finding that piqued curiosity increases activity in the brain’s reward circuit and the hippocampus and the interaction between them, making people more likely to retain information, even information unrelated to what they were curious about.⁠[5]

In September 2021 his Dynamic Memory Laboratory published a Current Biology study that used functional MRI to image volunteers’ hippocampus as they learned and recalled short stories, showing that the hippocampus links separate, distant events into coherent narratives that help people remember each event’s details; M.D./Ph.D. student Brendan Cohn-Sheehy was first author.⁠[6]

In February 2024, responding to Special Counsel Robert K. Hur’s assessment of President Joe Biden’s memory, he wrote an opinion essay for The New York Times distinguishing retrieval failure from memories actually being lost and saying that age in itself does not indicate memory deficits that would affect performance in a demanding leadership role.⁠[7]

On February 20, 2024, his popular-science book Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters was published, with ebook and audiobook editions released the same day; Vintage issued a 304-page paperback on February 11, 2025.⁠[8]

Reviewer Kevin Brown, reviewing the book published by Doubleday in February 2024, noted that it argues the brain is designed to forget almost everything we experience, and discusses emotion and memory, how memories change, and why testing oneself is more useful for learning than cramming.⁠[9]

His website describes the book as a New York Times bestseller that also draws on his life as a scientist, father and child of immigrants.⁠[10]

In February 2024 he was interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air, saying he is more interested in what people remember than in what they forget; discussing memory in the election cycle, he said he was not in a position to comment on the specifics of Biden’s or Trump’s memory problems.⁠[11]

He appeared on episode 430 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, whose description calls him a UC Davis psychologist and neuroscientist specializing in human memory; topics included creating and forgetting memories, memory training, imagination, déjà vu, false memories and false confessions, brain–computer interfaces, and AI and memory.⁠[12]

As of October 2026 he is director of the UC Davis Memory and Plasticity Program and a professor in the Department of Psychology.⁠[13]

He also directs the Dynamic Memory Lab, is affiliated faculty at the Center for Mind and Brain and a member of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Future Directions in Human Machine Workshop, and in 2025 wrote in New Scientist that he is deeply skeptical about comparisons between humans and machines.⁠[14]

His publisher says he has studied memory for more than 25 years and holds a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship; outside neuroscience he is a songwriter and guitarist with several recording credits, including a song on a feature film soundtrack.⁠[15]

Personal website: Public link: https://charanranganath.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[12]

X: Public account: https://x.com/CharanRanganath (opens in a new window)⁠[12]

University of California, Davis: Official website: https://www.ucdavis.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[13]