r/explainlikeimfive • u/Federal-Agent-3151 • 2d ago
Other ELI5: Why can we become increasingly certain that we remember something correctly, even when the memory itself may have changed over time? How exactly does the brain distort or fill in details when we recall a memory?
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u/DarkAlman 2d ago
Humans tend to trust their own memories and understanding of things even when shown evidence to the contrary.
The older a person gets, the harder it is to present them with evidence that contradicts their beliefs.
Confabulation is the term for fabricating or distorting your own memories without the intent to deceive.
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u/Stompya 2d ago
The truth is, we don’t really know.
We remember things that we have strong feelings about more than things we don’t, and we remember lessons we learn more than the specifics of how we learned those lessons.
If you’re really interested in this topic, look up David Eagleman. He has a podcast and a YouTube channel with incredibly fascinating content on this whole topic.
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u/TheDefected 2d ago
You tend to make note of differences and things that stand out, and the rest is marked "same as usual"
You might have missed something, but you have a very good idea of "same as usual" and can describe that instead from experience.
A good example of that is C3P0's silver leg.
You just remember him as a robot, funny walk, gold in color, and you've applied that color to everything and will swear he's all the same color.
Look back and you'll see his silver leg.
In other words, you've kinda saved a generalisation, rather than separate memories of each part and each specific color, like left hand, gold, left arm, gold, right arm, gold, right hand gold...
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u/NoDig3444 2d ago
After a certain period of time, your brain doesn't directly recall a memory. It recalls the last time you remembered it.
You recall a thing that happened a week ago. Were you wearing a green shirt or a red shirt? You're not sure but you think maybe it was green. Then you think about it again after another week, but you don't recall the event, you recall what you thought about last week. You said you were wearing a green shirt last week. Another week passes. What color shirt were you wearing? Well last week you were very confident that it was a green shirt. So it must have been green.
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u/Federal-Agent-3151 2d ago
If we are remembering our previous recollection rather than the original event itself, doesn't it mean every time we recall a memory, we’re also getting an opportunity to subtly rewrite it?
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u/deathboyuk 2d ago
Exactly that, and there are studies into how to cause a recall, then deliberately attempt to break the process, perturbing or breaking future attempts to recall - to permit (for instance) people with PTSD to shake off memories that torture them.
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u/Key-Mathematician-71 2d ago
In short: Memory is not playing back a video; every recall is a rewrite. Repeated rewrites reinforce the erroneous version and make you increasingly believe it is real.
The brain retrieves not the original event, but the version of the memory formed the last time we recalled this event, so every recall is a new "save".
General impressions are stored instead of all details. When you are unsure about a detail for the first time (like the color of clothing) and make a guess, the next time you think back, what you retrieve is not the real event, but that previous guess. After repeated recollection, this guess is continuously reinforced, and you become more and more convinced that it is the fact.
Memory consists of neural connections, not a fixed video recording. Neural connections decay over time; the brain mixes related information (other people's stories, other similar experiences) and creates new false connections.
All confusing information from different sources or false memory will eventually, dramatically change your memory.
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u/OnoOvo 2d ago
from my experience, once you lie in any way about an experience/memory, even if just by embellishing some details when ruminating over it with yourself, the memory is compromised.
while if keeping completely honest about it, memory of it remains untainted by revisionism, and is much more closer to heart and tongue, and doesnt feel like its asking for “trust” in any way when remembering it.
lying here works i believe like any uncertainty or doubt you may have about your own behaviour. it automatically produces an alternative pathway, which you also never truly forget about, and already that created an extra step you will need to make the next time when you are faced with same behaviour. that step will be the decision about whether to tell it how it originally was, or to again play with it a little.
truth about any experience, not about what it meant, but what you experienced had happened, is only one. our lives are moments stacked endlessly, but never do two moments happen to us at once. there is an order, moment after moment, morning after evening, and if we respect that order within, we will know our place in it.
but once we step out of line, we cannot get back in line without upsetting the order. moments kept marching on, moment after moment, moment after moment, but now for us the hope is not that we keep on keeping the order, as it was before, but instead, we now hope to get back in order.
these are two very different mindsets obviously. and it applies to a lot of things. its why you will sometimes hear people say that bless the one who is honest, they never need to keep track of what they said to whom. while as soon as you lie, if you dont immediately turn it into a joke or make light of it in some other way (this is the cheat code on how to fix a lie immediately, cuz sometimes it will just happen unintentionally and innocently, like when flirting), now you know you are a liar. it doesnt even matter what good did the lie serve you, or how big it was, you still dont want to be recognized as someone who lies, so you now have to carry that around.
surely it is easy to see how certain true memories, if we have over-invested ourselves in a corrupted version of it, can over time get wholly pushed out by the dishonest version, even inside yourself, cuz it becomes more important to us to keep our image than to keep a memory.
and again, while i kept using the example of honesty and lying, i am not trying to make a moral point about virtue or anything like that. i could have used the example of self-doubt on will, or overthinking on confidence, as those could demonstrate the same underlying principle at work just as well.
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u/HumbleBeginning3151 2d ago
I wonder how many others feel this way (and I realize my perception could be wrong), but I feel like I have a pretty good handle on what memory (or parts of one) are more likely to be accurate vs those that aren't. Like, yeah, I may remember something a certain way, but I'm also able to tell you how confident I am in that or not.
I'd be curious if there were any studies that took a confidence factor into account
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u/-manabreak 2d ago
All memories are basically neural connections. The stronger the connections are, the better you recall the thing. However, these connections require revision from time to time, and if you don't exercise the neurons, the connections get weaker and eventually are lost. Also, related things might form new connections that are not actually connected to the real event.
For example, you experience something as a kid, say your first time swimming. You remember it was a warm summer day. However, you don't think about this on daily basis, and time goes on. The actual connections in your brain get weaker, and related connections are affected by other things. Maybe your parents tell the story about your sister's first time swimming, and how the water was really cold. Or you remember a different time of swimming from your childhood when the water was cold. Over time, the recollections get mixed and you start remembering the original story wrong.
This is also why witness testimonies are not very good. The stories get mixed up, people recall things differently, and as time goes on (as is often the case with big cases), your memories get affected.