A study showed how the brain can “create” a false memory

the memories and the anecdotes They are a part of our lives that goes beyond the positive or negative consequences they may have. the memory It records and archives the conditions we experience on a daily basis, and this mechanism, in a certain way, shapes what is widely spoken of a personality.

However, recently, Sciences doubt our ability to He remembersEven what happened a few moments ago. Study conducted by experts from University of AmsterdamIn the Netherlands, it is assumed that people “can be born false provocations In the blink of an eye since then The human brain alters short-term memories Depending on what you expect to see (expectations).”

for researchers who published Their findings appear in the journal Plus oneShort-term memory is not permanent accurate representation For what has just been realized. instead of, It consists of what we expected to seesince the formation of the first trace memory.

To reach these conclusions, the authors conducted four experiments, during which they called 534 subjects to view slides containing letters of the Western alphabet. In the middle of each measure, they explained, “a different slide was shown, an overlap, with random letters” that were designed similarly to the originals, but in a different orientation (eg, Ɔ instead of C).

When the participants were asked to recall the overlap segment, most of them recalled “seeing the pseudo-letter as a true letter,” as the individuals who participated in the study familiar With the western alphabet, f Their brains expected to see the letters in their actual orientation.

Experts analyzed “Participants consistently and with high confidence reported that they saw the real counterpart of a pseudo-letter target.” They added: “That Imagine What do we have with Scenery and the brain can be formed by expectationswhich could lead to Perceptual illusions. Projections can reshape perceptual representations on short time scales, resulting in what we call Short-term memory illusions. These illusions appeared when participants viewed a memory screen containing real letters and pseudo-letters (i.e., reflected letters).

infobae Analyze the results of this study with Ricardo Allegrichair of the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuropsychology and Neuropsychiatry at the corky. “From perception, sometimes, we wait for something to happen. The hypothetical and scientific example is when someone shoots at a target, and expects a certain animal to appear. If suddenly a different animal appears, the person shoots the same way, and that’s because they’re prepared for what was In processing speed, the brain ends up giving the command to do so because of this predisposition, said the expert.

He added, “Under this idea, short-term memory is not permanent accurate representation For what has just been realized. A person, with his awareness of reality, short-term memory and expectations, can generate a amendment memory and create a false memory.

“In the scientific study – Allegri continued – the experts talk about ‘bottom-up’ management, which would be an entrance Information In memory of ; and “top-down” management, which is the expectation that a person will get the real information entered. In this latter dynamic there are possibilities for modification or misperception.”

According to Allegri, “In principle, humans cannot consciously manage memory processes, because they operate almost automatically. In contrast, false memory information can manifest itself in the short term as well as in the long term. Because? Because in long-term memory, one can Consolidation of information, and this consolidation can cause someone to remember differently. different or wrong Something that happened to him a long time ago.”

For her part, the neurologist Celeste Solomon (MN 152999) Dive into the conversation with infobaeGenerally speaking, we have two types of memory: long-term memory, where information is stored permanently; and short-term memory, which allows us to remember something for seconds or minutes and then remember it. “neglected”. In long-term memory, we store biographical information about our life or events we have experienced.

In this context, according to Eisliman, “Memory is always long-term “holes” that ‘filling up’ and that we adjust for past experiences and distortions, as our memory of the experience is not as reliable as the experience itself. Previously, it was believed that short-term memory does not contain false memories or illusions, unlike long-term memory, which can.

“Through the study – said the specialist – scientists from the University of Amsterdam showed that short-term memory can be affected by our past experiences, and that we modify short-term memory by comparing this new experience with previous experiences. This It is not satisfactoryis a way our brain has to save energy and it allows us to do so interpretation of the worldand in this case, even the most urgent memories, based on prior knowledge“.

How are memories generated in the brain? This is how Islaman explains it: “To generate a memory in the brain, particularly in the brain Hippocampusthree operations must occur: installation or modification; he storage; and the Recovery. This means that information enters the brain (this depends a lot on the person’s attention and motivation), that it is stored (because that person must be able to sort and categorize), and that at a given moment, that information is accessed from the stored memory to recall or retrieve. If, at any of these stages, a mistake, We will have I forgot“.

in turn, peter bekenstein, Biologist specializing in behavioral neuroscience, director of research at INECO Foundation And researcher coneAnd he considered: “The brain can generate phantom memories or memory illusions. In this case, the scientists who conducted the study say that many of the errors that have been attributed to an illusion at the perceptual level – such as visual illusions typical on the Internet – are in fact a very short-term memory error .”

Second, Betkenstein contributed: “Every time a person evokes a memory stored in memory, in effect, complement it, Because the brain is not a camera that records all the information, but there is a process of reconstruction, and there are memories that can be generated that are not the same as the experience. One rebuilds on the basis of what one knows about the world; Experiments attempt to fill in the gaps in memory with our prior knowledge.

Finally, the biologist emphasized, the information we acquire daily in the brain “adds to what we had before and a kind of network is formed. From an adaptive point of view, this reconstruction mechanism helps us not to have to constantly and with interest record everything that happens to us, so we memorize Cognitive resources.

According to Bekenstein, the problem “can arise, for example, when one trusts me witnesses of a crime. It is known that what that individual recounts will not necessarily correspond to what happened, and may be contaminated by the way in which he is asked and what happened in the interval between storing the information and its activation.”

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