Endel Tulving

New Capabilities

Died September 2023; his 1972 theory is now being challenged

For over fifty years, neuroscientists have treated remembering facts and recalling personal experiences as fundamentally different brain operations. A February 2026 study in Nature Human Behaviour found they were wrong. Researchers scanned 40 people performing carefully matched memory tasks and found no measurable difference in brain activity between the two types of recall.

Updated May 27