The Speculist

If Memory Serves

This is unsettling:

Alan Alda had nothing against hard-boiled eggs until last spring. Then the actor, better known as Hawkeye from M*A*S*H, paid a visit to the University of California, Irvine. In his new guise as host of a science series on American TV, he was exploring the subject of memory. The researchers showed him round, and afterwards took him for a picnic in the park. By the time he came to leave, he had developed a dislike of hard-boiled eggs based on a memory of having made himself sick on them as a child - something that never happened.

Imagine the abuse that being able to manipulate memory in this way could enable. Inducing behavior-changing memories might prove to be an effective form of brainwashing.

It's amazing to consider how malleable our memories are. I wonder how much of my life actually happened? Here's an odd little episode from childhood. I was watching TV with my parents when this commercial came on that showed cars parked near the water; there was also some reference to a tunnel. I asked what this was. My parents shared this kind of knowing look, and then my Dad explained that it was the tunnel under the Atlantic ocean. I was astounded! I didn't know there was such a thing. (I must have been six or seven.) My Dad then said that this isn't something we should talk about, because most people don't know about it.

This stands out as a demonstrably false memory from childhood. Clearly, there is no such tunnel (unless people really are doing a good job of keeping it under cover). So why do I remember being told about it? This may have been a particularly vivid dream which for some reason I don't remember as a dream. Or I may have been watching TV with my folks, asked them a question, and then misunderstood the answer. It's also possible that it did happen and my Dad was pulling my leg—not out of the question by any means—but my parents have no recollection of ever playing any such joke on me.

So I have this false memory. This one stands out because I know it's false, but it makes me wonder how many false memories I have rattling around in my head that I simply take for granted as real experiences?

We also have this ability to edit memories to make them more tolerable and even erase the ones we no longer want:

At the annual meeting of the US Society for Neuroscience in New Orleans last month, Anderson's group presented new data on how this "motivated forgetting" might arise in the brain. When people tried to suppress memories for certain words while having their brains scanned in a magnetic resonance imaging machine, not only did the researchers see a dampening of activity in the hippocampus, a structure known to be critical for memory formation, but the frontal cortex was highly active. Since the frontal cortex is important for conscious control, they believe that neurons here may be suppressing the representation of the unwanted word in the hippocampus, and in the process impairing its memory.

The article goes on to explain how certain drugs can benefit this natural process of "motivated forgetting," helping people who have been through serious trauma from developing post traumatic stress disorder. I wonder. Will we soon have the option of forgetting not just the traumatic, but the unpleasant? You know that stupid and embarrassing thing you said that time, years ago, the one that still pops into your mind from time to time, causing you to cringe even now? If you could highlight that memory in your brain and then click Delete, would you? Should you? Will people make themselves forget about jobs they didn't like? Relationships? Historical events that piss them off?

I can certainly think of a few items I would be tempted to drop in the old recycle bin. I'd be tempted, but I'm not sure that I'd do it. I already dislike the idea that I'm carrying false memories around, and that I may have suppressed some important stuff from memory. I think the knowledge that there were things that I had chosen to forget would drive me crazy. I'd want to know what they were!

I wonder if there would be any way of getting them back?

via GeekPress | also see some interesting discussion of these issues here and here

Posted by Phil at December 9, 2003 09:10 AM | TrackBack