A new mathematical framework suggests that humans store narrative memories as "random trees," where abstract summaries and detailed events are organized hierarchically in memory. doi.org/g9stjx

I am not an expert in narratology, but it seems to focus on the semantic structure within individual stories. We are kind of taking the “spherical cow” approach here: assuming that if we look at a sufficiently large number of stories and people’s memories, the individual differences average out.

❤️"The Physics of Romeo and Juliet": scientific evidence for "I only just met you, but I feel like I've known you for my entire life. " 📖Excited to share that our paper is selected as an Editor's Suggestion in PRL. 💡Curious about how statistical mechanics has anything to do with stories? Read on.

Random Tree Model of Meaningful Memory https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.11.627835v1