[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/)

# Making Connections

## Details

**Authors** Greene

**Year** 2010

**Publisher** Scientific American Mind

**Discipline** Cognitive Science

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.2307/24943081) 
10.2307/24943081

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To explore how memory is a method for making connections.

### What they found (results)

Memory is the method by which events that happen are connected to the consequences of events (actions or decisions) so that the person does not repeat that same mistake. Also, when one’s hippocampus is damaged, the ability to make new memories, and to learn complex associations is lost, which can lead to amnesia. The ability to make connections also allows humans to conceive of the future. Put enough of these item associations together, and you will create a web of connections that can help you make predictions and navigate the world more effectively over time.

## Commentary

### In short

Social interactions can pose our greatest predictive challenges and may well have been a major impetus, among our pre human ancestors, for the evolution of astounding learning abilities to make relationships between and among things, concepts and emotions.

### In more detail

Additional research by Green 2010, examined how memory is a function of linking thoughts to one another. He said, “recent research has shown that some people who lose their memory also lose the ability to connect things to each other in their mind.” He notes that connections are what makes memory powerful, for example, connections one makes when they make a mistake. Memory is the method by which events that happen are connected to the consequences of events (actions or decisions) so that the person does not repeat that same mistake. Green also shows that when one’s hippocampus is damaged, the ability to make new memories, and to learn complex associations is lost, which can lead to amnesia. The ability to make connections also allows humans to conceive of the future. “Put enough of these item associations together, and you will create a web of connections that can help you make predictions and navigate the world more effectively over time.” Connections made by the brain, also create sentimentality, that is, connections are the root of why people feel sentimental in the first place. Green suggests that the reason that humans have such a developed ability to make connections is that we are social beings. He writes, “social interactions can pose our greatest predictive challenges and may well have been a major impetus, among our pre-human ancestors, for the evolution of astounding learning abilities” to make relationships between and among things, concepts and emotions.

**Patterns it shows** R

**How to cite this** Greene (2010). Making Connections. Scientific American Mind.