Have you ever felt a crushing wave of panic when you cant for the life of you remember the name of that actor in the movie you saw last week, or you walk into a room only to forget why you went there in the first place? If youre over 40, youre probably not laughing. You might even be worried that these lapses in memory could be an early sign of Alzheimers or dementia. In reality, for the vast majority of us, these examples of forgetting are completely normal. Why? Because while memory is amazing, it is far from perfect. Our brains arent designed to remember every name we hear, plan we make or day we experience. Just because your memory sometimes fails doesnt mean its broken or succumbing to disease. Forgetting is actually part of being human. Neuroscientist and acclaimed novelist Lisa Genova delves into how memories are made and how we retrieve them.