Psychologist Wilma Bainbridge leads the Brain Bridge Lab, which examines the bridge between perception and memory. One key branch of her research focuses on the concept of memorability, the idea that images have an intrinsic ability to affect our memory.
Through her research Bainbridge has shown that certain images—photographs and even faces—are remembered by most people, while others are forgotten. Some images are simply more memorable than others, whether the viewer likes them or not, or is even paying close attention.
Memorability is not related to physical beauty, Bainbridge has found. Her hypothesis is that memorable images are less work for the brain to process. In her future work she hopes to discover “generalizable principles of memorability,” she says.
Bainbridge’s lab has developed a neural network, ResMem, that can predict which images are more or less memorable. ResMem assigns a numerical memorability score to any image uploaded to it, and in fact predicts memorability far better than humans do. In experiments, subjects have shown little insight into which images they will remember later.
Most recently the lab has developed FalseResMem, a newer, artificial intelligence model that predicts people’s chances of having a false memory.
In 2025 Bainbridge was recognized with the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology. She was named a 2024 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow in Neuroscience and a 2023 Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science.