A recent neuroscience study reveals that the way a story is told can influence how the listener’s brain forms and recalls memories, activating different brain networks depending on whether the story emphasizes conceptual or perceptual details. This insight sheds light on why individuals remember stories differently and suggests that storytelling style plays a crucial role in shaping memory.
The study, led by psychologist Signy Sheldon at McGill University and published in JNeurosci, explored how the brain processes the same story when told with different types of details. For example, describing a dinner could focus on perceptual elements — the appearance, taste, and sensory experience of the food — or conceptual elements, such as the thoughts and feelings that the food inspired. While neither approach was found to be easier or harder to remember in the short term, the research showed that these different storytelling methods engage distinct memory mechanisms in listeners’ brains.
Memories are not localized to a single brain area but are distributed across networks in the brain’s outer layers, with the hippocampus playing a central role in forming, indexing, and retrieving memories. The hippocampus interacts with different brain networks depending on the nature of the information being encoded. Sheldon and her team hypothesized that stories with varying types of details might activate different hippocampal networks.
To test this, 35 participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans while listening to three everyday stories: grocery shopping, going to the airport, and dining at a restaurant with a friend. Each story was presented in two versions — one emphasizing conceptual details and the other focusing on perceptual details — while maintaining the same overall narrative structure. For instance, in the restaurant story, one version included conceptual reflections on the deliciousness of the pasta and the narrator’s feelings of hunger, while the other described sensory details like the length of the pepper mill and the visual presentation of the spaghetti with meatballs.
After listening to the stories inside the scanner, participants were asked to recall and retell them. The researchers found that recalling conceptually framed stories activated the hippocampus along with the default mode network (DMN), a brain network involved in processing abstract, self-referential, and emotional information. In contrast, recalling perception-heavy stories activated the hippocampus alongside brain regions outside the DMN, including the left angular gyrus, which is associated with processing sensory details from various modalities.
This finding aligns with existing knowledge about the DMN’s role in abstract and emotional processing, as noted by Hongmi Lee, a cognitive psychologist at Purdue University who was not involved in the study. The DMN’s involvement suggests that conceptual storytelling engages higher-level, abstract memory processes, while perceptual storytelling relies more on sensory-related brain regions.
Interestingly, while participants remembered both types of stories equally well immediately after hearing them, they reported a preference for conceptual stories and expressed greater confidence in recalling them. According to Chris Baldassano, a memory researcher at Columbia University who also was not involved in the study, conceptual details often constitute the core of what people remember from stories. Although vivid perceptual details can be memorable—especially if they involve striking images—the essential elements that tend to stick are the social interactions, emotions, and characters, all of which are conceptual in nature.
This preference for conceptual memories appears to become more pronounced with age. Previous research shows that as people grow older, they tend to remember more conceptual aspects of experiences rather than vivid perceptual details. This shift might be due to age-related changes in the brain that make encoding and retrieving sensory details more difficult, or it could reflect the way life experience influences memory priorities. Sheldon suggests that younger individuals pay more attention to novel sensory details because everything is new to them, whereas older adults rely more on memories that support social connection and familiarity.
The study also highlights a practical takeaway for storytellers: including relevant and unique details—whether conceptual or perceptual—helps create memories that are easier to access later. Baldassano explains that details provide multiple “hooks” for retrieving a memory, increasing the likelihood that the story will be remembered.
Overall, this research advances our understanding of how the brain encodes and retrieves stories and emphasizes that the style of storytelling shapes the neural pathways involved in memory formation. It also offers insight into individual differences in memory recall and preferences, as some people may naturally gravitate toward remembering conceptual information while others focus more on perceptual details.
Allison Parshall, the article’s author and associate editor at Scientific American, brings expertise in covering neuroscience and psychology. Her reporting helps