Mapping out exotic memories in materials via motifs

Disordered and multistable materials have memories of past driving, making them natural candidates for computation and soft robotics. Starting from simple building blocks, dubbed as motifs, which describe how interacting multistable elements evolve under driving, we uncover multiple ways to encode memory in matter, going beyond conventional return-point memory. Interactions introduce transients and other non-RPM behaviors, revealing new opportunities to design and control diverse memory responses with simple driving protocols.