Scientific American Frontiers on PBS

“Dont Forget” explores memory---how it works and how it “becomes slippery and evasive, sometimes vanishing forever,” says host Alan Alda. Included are segments on amnesiacs who can remember the distant past but not something that happened moments earlier because of hippocampus damage; how “plump” (i.e., healthy) hippocampi are key to matching names and faces; and how memory can be strengthened; and how the “seeds” of false memories implanted. Then Alda reviews Alzheimer's research (there's some hope), and he visits a UCLA researcher who has devised a regimen of mental exercises aimed at “keeping the brains of baby boomers in fighting trim.”