In two studies, scientists showed volunteers a series of words or images while their brains were being monitored. The volunteers were not told it was a memory experiment, so they made no special effort to memorize the words or scenes. After the experiment, scientists quizzed the volunteers on which words or pictures they remembered. Scientists already knew that there are two areas of the brain that deal with memory. These studies showed that if these areas showed a lot of activity on the scan while the volunteer was first seeing a specific word or picture, they would remember that one in later questioning. If there was little activity in these areas, they would not remember it. While this doesn’t explain why your brain remembers one thing but not another, it does pinpoint where to look to find the answers.