I can still remember the details of my wedding day with the most crystalline vividness, from the flower arrangements to the design of the invitations to the contents of my speech. I can also easily recall the sense of elation, hope and fulfilment. These emotional memories are very much fused to my memories of the events themselves, but they aren’t one and the same. A new study suggests that, like everyone else, I recorded these emotional memories independently of the factual aspects of the day.

Typically, the happiness of a wedding day or the sadness of a death becomes inextricably linked to the details of those events, as we repeatedly replay and reflect on them in our heads. To see the