How Can You Tell a False Memory From a True One?
slate.com
slate.com
AG: Is there any way to distinguish a false memory from a real one? EL: Without independent corroboration, little can be done to tell a false memory from a true one.
AG: Could brain imaging one day be used to do this? EL: I collaborated on a brain imaging study in 2010, and the overwhelming conclusion we reached is that the neural patterns were very similar for true and false memories. We are a long way away from being able to look at somebody's brain activity and reliably classify an authentic memory versus one that arose through some other process.
... Overall, true and false memories showed similar brain activation, but could be distinguished by this reactivation. This was true only in the early regions of the sensory cortex. ...
ref: https://webfiles.uci.edu/eloftus/StarkOkadoLoftus_FalseMemor...
Anecdotally, one time I re-played in my head an entire movie after I watched it (Astro Boy!) as an experimental exercise, and it was clear that as I was 'recalling' it, the line between "reconstruction" and "direct memory" was extremely blurry, and I could feel my own eagerness to fill in details that may or may not have occurred.
Edit: rm anecdotal evidence.
In constrast, I otherwise never remember my dreams unless I wake in the middle of one, and even then they completely fade from my memory within minutes.
"AG: How does this happen? What exactly is going on when we retrieve a memory?
"EL: When we remember something, we're taking bits and pieces of experience—sometimes from different times and places—and bringing it all together to construct what might feel like a recollection but is actually a construction. The process of calling it into conscious awareness can change it, and now you're storing something that's different. We all do this . . . "
The way I have expressed the matter before in discussions on Hacker News is that the problem with human memory is that read operations and simultaneously write operations. We think we are just recalling, but we are actively reshaping our understanding of previous events, true or false.
And we just have to agree to disagree about last few statements in that article, on the page two.
Edit: I completely agree with you and with the statement that recounting something may change or reorganize the memory. It is just the concept of 'false' memories that I dislike. It is very poorly defined.
I do have formal background in machine learning, computer science and had taken classes in neuroscience. I am a PhD dropout and I did original research in computer vision. I have every right to comment on articles written by specialists on 'false memories'.
What I find to be idiotic is how trivial you make your contradiction, without any facts to back it up, adding computerish language to pander to the HN crowd ("metadata", really?), when it's extremely well established that people, with disturbing frequency, remember things that simply did not happen.
It's fine to disagree, but this sort of straightforward contradiction adds little to the conversation. It's the internet equivalent of Monty Python's argument clinic.
Who do you think are these researchers? More ML or more neuroscience?
///These disciplines are very relevant to understanding how memories are stored. More relevant than neuroscience in fact. Say, if you'd study modern computer vision, you will have some understanding about mechanisms in the works of human visual subsystem; about how humans memorize, recognize and associate images and image sequences. You will not have that understanding, if you'd study modern (basic) neuroscience.
And you actually might learn some real stuff from people like these guys from UC Berkeley, who can recover video sequences by identifying an ML model with the visual cortex an then proceeding further and recovering unseen video sequences from fMRI of V4 area of neocortex.
... Now I only wish I could find a forum where a link to a research publication like this:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3031698 [Reconstructing visual experiences from brain activity evoked by natural movies]
Would not have an order of magnitude less interest than a link to a slate article like this:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6349590 [ How Can You Tell a False Memory From a True One?]
The mechanisms of memory are not, as far as I know, well understood. However, it's well established that people can and routinely do remember things that did not occur. The why and how may be speculative, but the fact that it happens is not.
Here is the link again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3031698 [Reconstructing visual experiences from brain activity evoked by natural movies]
Hint: how can you explain that sometimes, the recovered image contains an object completely different from that seen by a subject of the experiment? [say, tree instead of a man]
Hint: can similar experiment be done with the part of the pre-frontal cortex responsible for associating visual memories with the condition in which these memories were formed? [imagined, dreamed, seen]
Indeed, there is an example in this thread that is perhaps even more on-point than the comment to which you replied.
I personally had a repressed memory and it was uncovered in therapy. I am lucky that my mom is still alive and was able to verify the memories.
It's obvious to me from the snark in her tone like the word "pristine" and the rest of the article that she is a shill for defense attorneys.
Seems like her attitude towards "repressed memory" is an overly literal reaction against colloquially popular definitions of repressed memories. Perhaps her attitude is for the best because by not believing in the notion of repressed memories we prevent ourselves from having them? Still, isn't that some form of repression?!
That was my experience. There were some embarrassing and traumatic events when I was a child. Throughout the rest of my childhood there were frequent reminders of the events. If I brought the events up later to my parent's they wouldn't acknowledge them, and they strongly discourage me from discussing it. These were significant events that led to my parent's divorce and I repressed them. When I recalled them later it was very emotional.
With regards to research and scientific proof... I don't know how you would prove it. How can others verify my experience. It's not easily repeatable. Even if it were repeatable... how could you prove something like that in an ethical way without traumatizing people.