Event: 'Memento With MIT Neuroscientist John Gabrieli' Print
  Greater Boston
Events taking place in the Boston area.
Date: Monday, September 16, 2013 At 07:00 pm
Contact Info:
Coolidge Corner Theater 290 Harvard Street Brookline, MA 617/734-2500
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The Coolidge Corner Theater kicks off a new season of its popular Science on Screen series on Monday, September 16 at 7:00 pm with a 35mm screening of director Christopher Nolan’s neo-noir tour de force, Memento.  Nolan (The Dark Night, Inception) made his mark with this 2000 indie sleeper hit about a man with severe memory loss who tries to solve and avenge his wife’s murder.  Introducing the film is MIT neuroscientist John Gabrieli, an expert on how our brains organize memories, thoughts, and emotions.

Tickets ($10 general admission/$8 students and Museum of Science members/free for Coolidge Corner Theatre members) may be purchased online at www.coolidge.org or at the Coolidge Corner Theatre box office, located at 290 Harvard Street, Brookline.  Phone: 617/734-2500.

Told largely in reverse chronological order, Memento followsformer insurance investigator Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) as he doggedly searches for his wife’s killer despite suffering from anterograde amnesia, a condition that makes it impossible for him to form new memories. Because nothing sticks for more than a few minutes, Leonard relies on an elaborate system of notes, Polaroid snapshots, and body tattoos to remind himself of where he is, what he’s found out, and what he should do next. Aiding him in his quest – or perhaps using his unreliable memory for their own ends – are a cheerful, ubiquitous fellow named Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) and Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss), a beautiful bartender.  As the story of Leonard’s investigation unfolds backwards, a second narrative strand involving an insurance claimant from Leonard’s past moves forward in time, adding new layers of complexity and intrigue to one of cinema’s great mindbenders.

Before the film, guest speaker John Gabrieli discusses how memory works, its depiction in the film, and a real-world case of anterograde amnesia. As a graduate student at MIT, Gabrieli was among a select group of scientists invited to study Henry Molaison, a man who lived with anterograde amnesia for over 50 years after having his hippocampus removed at age 27 to prevent epileptic seizures. Known in his lifetime only as H.M., Molaison is perhaps the most famous patient in the history of neurology and reputed to be the inspiration for the protagonist in Memento. He died in 2008, having provided groundbreaking insights into the basis of human memory.

About the Speaker

John Gabrieli is the director of the AthinoulaA.MartinosImagingCenter at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, where he is also an Investigator. Gabrieli has faculty appointments in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, where he holds the Grover Hermann Professorship.  He also co-directs the MIT Clinical Research Center and is Associate Director of the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, MGH/MIT, located at Massachusetts General Hospital.

About Science on Screen

The Coolidge Corner Theatre’s Science on Screen series, launched in 2005, pairs screenings of classic and modern films with lively presentations by notable science and technology experts.  Each film serves as a jumping-off point for the speaker to share scientific research or technological advances in a way that engages popular-culture audiences – from the neurobiology of the zombies in Night of the Living Dead to how far artificial intelligence has come since 2001: A Space OdysseyScience on Screen is co-presented by The Museum of Science, Boston and supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, with additional support from Gesmer Updegrove LLP and Rubin/Anders Scientific, Inc.  In 2011, with funding from the Sloan Foundation, the Coolidge expanded Science on Screen nationally.  For more information about this national initiative, visit www.coolidge.org/sloan.

The Coolidge’s Science on Screen program continues on Monday, October 21 with a screening of Young Frankenstein, paired with a talk on bioelectricity and regeneration by Tufts Research Associate Professor Dany Adams.