When the Mind Recalls a Memory, It’s not the Original Memory. In Fact, The Act of Remembering is an Act of Creative Reimagination. The Put-together Memory Doesn’t Just Have a Few Holes; It Also Has Some Entirely New Bits Pasted In

I want you to think back at the first time you saw your significant other. Now let me guess, at that action, butterflies immediately seize your stomach, your chest tightens and you giggle at the memory. Now, would you consider it love at first sight?

But are you sure that ‘love’ was the first emotion that came into mind when you first saw your significant other? Do you recall the exact happenings that transpired during the time you saw that person? Chances are, you’re not going to remember most of what happened, and the little you do will be supplied with what you think had happened.

That is how our memory works, actually. According to the authors of a new Northwestern Medicine study, “Our memory takes fragments of the present and inserts them into past memories. Recollections are updated with current information.”

“Our memory is not like a video camera.” Donna Jo Bridge said. She is the lead author, a postdoctoral person in medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg school of Medicine. “Your memory reframes and edits events to create a story to fit your current world. It’s built to be current.”

So what about the notorious love at first sight? Bridge has explained that when you think back to when you met your partner, you may recall this feeling of love and euphoria. But may ne this is so because you may be projecting your current feelings back to the very first encounter with this person.”

Maybe you fail to recall that you hated what she wore the first time you met her, or that he made jokes that were funny (only to him). But don’t fret, he probably doesn’t remember your bad hair day, or that she forgot that you actually tripped the first time you met. It’s okay, nobody has a perfect memory.

In fact, the notion of a perfect memory is a myth, according to Joel Voss, senior author of the paper and an assistant professor of medical social sciences and of neurology at Feinberg. “Memory is designed to help us make good decisions in the moment. Therefore, memory has to stay up-to-date. The information that is relevant right now can overwrite what was there to begin with.”

Elizabeth Loftus, an American cognitive psychologist and an expert in memory has conducted an experiment on this. She conducted this experiment in the US, with 300 participants – defendants who were imprisoned, all with different sentences. Though thorough investigation, she discovered that ¾ of the convictions are due to faulty eyewitness memory.

The implications for eyewitness court testimony are clear. We may not be able to fully recall the happening that we witnessed because it can easily be overwritten by other pieces of information. “Our memory is built to change, not regurgitate facts, so we are not very reliable witnesses.” Bridge said. A caveat of the research is that it was done in a controlled experimental setting and shows how memories changed within the experiment. “Although this occurred in a laboratory setting, it’s reasonable to think the memory behaves like this in the real world,” Bridge said.

And in the 1990’s, there arose an extreme kind of memory problem. Some psychotherapy patients would go into therapy with one kind of problem (like an anxiety or eating disorder) and come out of it with another (particularly with extreme memories of brutalization.

Loftus tried to investigate about this. She cited the methods of psychotherapy, particularly the imagination exercises, dream interpretation, and hypnosis as a probable cause of these new and extreme memories. After all, our memory is like a Wikipedia page – it has to be kept up – to – date, and at the same time, anyone can change it.

Just because they say it with confidence, detail, emotion, doesn’t mean its necessarily true, because chances are, the person has already filled the gaps of his or her memory with other factors as well.

When you feed people misinformation, you can contaminate their memory. And misinformation is everywhere. Anyone has the power to contaminate – to change a person’s memory. When should we use this mind technology? And when should we ban it? Because after all, memory is such a fragile thing.

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