A few questions about memories

[chamin]

Well I have a few questions.

1. what percentage of your memories are false? Have there ever been cases where 50% or more of a person's memories are false?

2. Why are some memories of experiences you can imagine/visualize/etc but for others you only remember details but can't really/fully imagine them?

3. Why do people have false memories in dreams? eg sometimes I have perfectly clear false memories and experiences of recollection in my dreams that are not true.

Edited July 23, 2013 by chamin

[Nouveau]

1. Not that I am aware of, false memories tend to be quite rare.

 

2. Memory tends to relate to conscious interpretation, for example if you see an attractive woman you may well be able to recall her in far more detail than another woman that you didn't think of as particularly attractive. This is because your conscious mind has interpreted the information and prioritised it. In reality you would have recorded the same amount of information about both women as can be seen from experiments under hypnosis. During hypnosis we can see that the brain does actually record all information equally at the subconscious level, however it requires the conscious state to make sense of that information into what we call memories. This processing of the information also assigns a priority factor of how important it is for us to have that information on hand, this affects the speed of our recall process and also determines how much detail we can recall from a particular memory.

 

3. Nobody fully understands the way the brain works as yet, what we do know is that dreams arn't actually memories at all. They are not a conscious attempt to process and recall information, this is why there is no sense or order to our dreams. Though sometimes they may seem and feel real they are fabrications of fantasy and not based in reality.

Edited July 23, 2013 by Nouveau

[Popcorn Sutton]

If you're near people who are within the proximity of someone who has memory problems, you may be treated as if you have the memory problems. Memories are strengthened when they are contextually active, mentally and physically. There is current research involving how we forget, but it's not worked out very clearly. I could use an answer.

[CharonY]

1) Memory is not likely to be complete false, but just inaccurate. It will depend a lot on how important the details were to you when you experienced them and whether you recall them frequently. That being said, inaccuracies in memories are very common as memories are reconstructions rather than photographic snapshots of events. Check out this Ted talk for example http://www.ted.com/talks/scott_fraser_the_problem_with_eyewitness_testimony.

 

For the other points, there is quite some research on memory and among the things that have been reported include emotional involvement or novelty of the experience, but it would be way outside of my expertise trying to summarize everything.

[Bill Angel]

The issues concerning the validity of memories is sometimes conceptualized as the Rashomon Effect.

For example see The Rashomon effect- the psychology of relationships

http://www.effectivepsychotherapy.net/2011/11/psychology-of-relationships/

[Ringer]

As a general rule, all of your memories are wrong. They are a vague construction of what you may have experienced as well as what you have heard/seen since that memory was first formed.

 

Think about it this way: any experience you have is your brain putting together what it believes is relevant information and guesses it makes based on context. Basically your experience is a puzzle put together with pieces missing, a memory is when some of those pieces are lost or replaced by pieces from someone else's puzzle later on.

[chamin]

Also is it just me or are there particular types memories that you can imagine later and others which you can't really "imagine" but can recall the factual details?

And the former sometimes turns to the latter with time

[Ringer]

Also is it just me or are there particular types memories that you can imagine later and others which you can't really "imagine" but can recall the factual details?

And the former sometimes turns to the latter with time

I don't what you mean, are you talking about episodic memory vs. semantic memory?

[Bill Angel]

This recent article seemed relevant to this discussion:

Scientists can implant false memories into mice

http://bbcco.uk/news/science-environment-23447600

"Our memory changes every single time it's being 'recorded'. That's why we can incorporate new information into old memories and this is how a false memory can form without us realising it." Susumu Tonegawa from RIKEN-MIT said his teams' work provided the first animal model in which false and genuine memories could be investigated in the cells which store memories, called engram-bearing cells. "Humans are highly imaginative animals. Just like our mice, an aversive or appetitive event could be associated with a past experience one may happen to have in mind at that moment, hence a false memory is formed."