We often recognise that a person is familiar before we recollect how we know them. In a recent publication in Nature Neuroscience, CBU scientists Bernhard Staresina, Rik Henson and colleagues in Bonn, Germany, combined functional magnetic resonance imaging of healthy volunteers with intrancranial electroencephalographic recordings from patients to reveal the time-courses of familiarity and recollection within the brain. Two regions of the medial temporal lobe that have previously been implicated in memory were examined: the Perihinal cortex and the Hippocampus. The Perirhinal cortex showed a rapid familiarity signal, which was shortly followed by a recollective signal in Hippocampus and then a recollective signal in Perirhinal cortex. This cascade of signals was accompanied by an increase in functional coupling between these two brain regions when recollection occurred. This suggests that different medial temporal lobe regions initiate different memory processes, but eventually they need to work together in order to enable a full-blown recollection. These findings further our understanding of how our brains support our ability to remember episodes in our life.