Try to recall one of your oldest experiences. You might even visualize a specific detail, a person, a color, a sound. Despite its age, the memory returns easily, but there is a small problem: memories do not remain intact forever, and every time there is a gap, the brain tries to fill it with something. As if that were not enough, the process can be manipulated, leading a person to create a fictitious representation based on fragments of previous memories.
The Challenge of False Memories
False memories. The phrase even sounds contradictory. Memories are based on something we lived, they are fundamental to the formation of experiences and skills. Essentially… they are ours. So how can they become false? This small exercise that we shared in mid-2017 teaches us how easy and fast a false memory is introduced.
In broader cases, a striking example is the Mandela Effect, with facts that somehow became embedded in the public mind, and that never happened. A huge step to escape this chaos is to understand how memory works. The classic mistake is to interpret memories as data stored in a physical file cabinet, when in reality they are much more volatile and unstable than we imagine.
What the Experts Say
According to psychologist Julia Shaw, who is also a specialist in false memories, “memory” is not an individual physical structure, but exists as a distributed network across the brain.
When reviewing one of those memories, we activate several brain regions at once, generating a representation of what you have experienced. Every time we remember, the links in these networks become stronger, but that does not guarantee their stability.
Cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus explains that the concept of permanence in long-term memory has never been fully proven. In other words, we are “reconstructing” and “reconsolidating” that memory with each recall, and the possibility of modifying it arises.
It is something completely natural, but with very important repercussions. First, manipulation. Misinformation, fake news, suggestive questions, repetitive data, post-truth. Doctor Loftus directly uses the term “memory contamination”.
Shaw conducted an experiment in which, through a series of interviews, she demonstrated that imagination plays a vital role in the construction of false memories. Through pure repetition, what “could” have happened becomes something that “did happen”.
The Real-World Impact
Now, justice systems depend on testimonies and psychological analyses. But if memory is so fragile and malleable, how can it be held in such high regard?
To close, two facts: More than 70 percent of exonerations based on DNA studies in the United States involve mistaken statements by witnesses, and experts believe there is some potential for therapeutic intervention in better understanding false memories, and exploring the possibility of modifying bad experiences to improve the patient's quality of life.
