Your memory is lying to you. Here’s how. | Lisa Genova | Big Think
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- čas přidán 12. 02. 2022
- Your memory is lying to you. Here’s how, with Lisa Genova
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Our memories are not reality.
A memory is the pattern of neural activity that represents the sights, sounds, smells, feelings, information, and language that you experienced when you learned something. When this neural circuit is reactivated, you experience a memory.
Recalling memories is not a passive process. Every time we recall a memory, it changes, and we store this “2.0 version” over the older version in our brain. With each retelling, the memory drifts further and further away from the original memory.
Read the video transcript: bigthink.com/series/the-big-t...
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About Lisa Genova:
Lisa Genova is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Still Alice, Left Neglected, Love Anthony, Inside the O’Briens, and Every Note Played. Still Alice was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, and Kristen Stewart. Lisa graduated valedictorian from Bates College with a degree in biopsychology and holds a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard University. She travels worldwide speaking about the neurological diseases she writes about and has appeared on The Dr. Oz Show, Today, PBS NewsHour, CNN, and NPR. Her TED talk, “What You Can Do to Prevent Alzheimer’s,” has been viewed more than five million times. The New York Times bestseller REMEMBER is her first work of nonfiction.
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Read more of our stories on memory:
Where are memories stored in the brain?
►► bigthink.com/neuropsych/where...
How trying to predict the future can transform your memories
►► bigthink.com/neuropsych/false...
Brain hemispheres swap memories to help you see the big picture
►► bigthink.com/neuropsych/brain...
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Have you ever misremembered something?
It’s often referred to as “the Mandela effect”.
@@mr.c2485 lol
Yeah....my wedding anniversary 🤣🤣...Both my husband & me always forget!...hmmm...
Yes.
Not anything major.
If smoking marijuana causes short-term memory loss, what does smoking marijuana do?
It causes short term memory loss. And often also short time memory loss.
@@koerel
Thank God I NEVER got tempted to try that stuff.
This should have more likes haha
😂😂
I will add that episodic memories don’t have to be “old” to be corrupted. I can give the example of one time when I was in a car, riding shotgun, giving directions to the driver, and I told him to turn left at a particular intersection, and he proceeded to turn right. When I said “stop” and asked why he turned *right* when I said, “turn left” he claimed that I had said, “turn right.” I knew, with absolutely certainty, that I had said, “turn left”, I had a very clear memory of speaking those words, and it had happened mere seconds beforehand. Fortunately I had been recording myself with voice memos (so that I could later type up the directions to email to other people) and I played back the voice memo, fully expecting to hear myself say “turn left.” To my complete shock, I heard myself say “turn right”! I actually looked at the driver and said, “how did you manage to change than?” because that was the only explanation that made sense, that somehow the recording was altered. But my rational mind prevailed, and I understood that obviously my memory was wrong, and I believed that I had said “turn left” because that was what I had *intended* to say (no idea why the wrong word came out, some kind of glitch in my brain).
You remembered accurately what your mind had encoded. You encoded improperly!
This phenomenon can be reproduced artificially too. I've watched persons participate in hypnosis where the hypnotist uses verbal suggestion with the person under trance to cause them to "forget" left from right, or up from down, or even their own name. Interresting phenomenon. It is indeed a rearrangement of how we understand how things are coded in our brain.
One of the most interesting things I picked up from psychology was how remembering moments would increase their chance of being altered!
My wife’s memory is so good… she can remember things that I haven’t even done. 😂
I've heard this kind of memory like: episodic, semantic, implicit(i.e. muscle memory) and explicit memory. But, prospective memory is new to me! Definitely will stay in my long term semantic memory: "prospective memory", the memory of the 'future' you, the 'to-do-list' memory. For example, " I need to buy that 'memory' book tomorrow" hahaha..
Adding new data to old memories is the reason why police forces have strict rules for how to handle witnesses.
A witness might only have a vague description of a suspect. If the police shows them a single picture and asks if it's them, the witness might initially say that they don't know, but the damage is already done. Elements of the picture will be added to the memory, so that a week later when shown the same picture they will positively identify the person, and honestly belief it is the real suspect.
Reminds me of these books I read by Elizabeth Loftus on how malleable our memories are. Not only that, one can also forge a memory of an event, or a desire, or your likeness/unlikeness and you'd believe it and memorize the senses too (similar to how you actually feel things in a dream but more emphatically).
Episodic memory is the most fascinating science concept I've ever read.
I had a frightening experience with memory. I once told a friend something that had happened to me. A few months later I witnessed this same friend telling other people about my experience as if it had happened to him, in front of me! He behaved as if it had really happened to him, even after I told him I was the one who had told him about this experience. It happened again twice, with other people at other times, and it was enough for me to doubt even my own memories. Shocking, to say the least.
This just reminds me to take a moment to think back before responding. Definitely makes me utilize other resources
".... The more we can develop a better relationship with it." Exactly!
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I’m wishing everyone who clicked on this channel nothing but HAPPINESS & PROSPERITY ❤💰
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literally love these videos
Thanks so much, glad you do!
@@bigthink So sad.
I distinctly remember going to Malaga for a two weeks holiday in the 90’s with my family. Sons, daughter, daughters in law, son in law and five grandchildren. Remember the hotel pretty well, the restaurant, bars, swimming pool and the places we went to. I’ve remembered this for years but none of my family remember it. Apparently none of us have ever been there. 🤷♀️
Memory is very often not working to ones advantage. I had two close friends who’s memories, coupled with imagination, lied to them in such a profound way that they decided that life was not worth living. None of what the mind projected on them was true, but the memories and imaginations wouldn’t allow for truth or reality. They were simply guilty of believing the suggestions…false suggestions.
Thanks David Eagleman for teaching me all of this exactly 6 years before this book was even published (The Brain - 2015).
Brilliant!
Memories, like dreams - are based on emotion.
In dreams our subconscious creates the scene to match the prominent emotion of the day - in memory, we recall the circumstance of the emotion, some actual, some fabricated
Watching the video with the hope that it will help me forget some memories
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I have memories, all visual (no auditory component) - verified by my parents as accurate - that date from my 1st year of life.
Thank you very much ❤️✝️❤️✝️❤️✝️
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فيه نوعين من الذاكرة . قصيرة المدى للساعات و الايام و الأسابيع. و طويلة المدى و تحوى الماضي الخاص بك و خرائط المستقبل الخاص بك .
So how we experience time VS perceive time and remember time are ALL different. Woah.
Can I talk to you sir
Hi, Lisa,
I am curious about memories. You have stated that memories are stored throughout the brain. Therefore, aspects of each memory are stored in different locations, and no holistic memory is stored. Only aspects are stored, and they are spread throughout the brain. Did I get you right?
At time 1:29, you state, “So if I’m thinking of the sight and sound of Mickey Mouse, I’ll have neurons in the back of my head, that’s my occipital cortex, my visual cortex will be activated.”
My concern: Why will the neurons activate? What is the mechanism?
You stated (time 1:41), “Those [neurons activate] represent what Mickey Mouse looks like.” This implies a visual memory aspect of what Mickey Mouse looks like. It is not a holistic memory of what he looks like; it is only a visual aspect of what he looks like.
1. Can you find where that visual memory aspect is stored? Is there more than one stored? If so, which one is selected, and why?
2. When you render the total holistic memory of Mickey Mouse, how do you find all the other aspects of the memory, and how are they brought back into one rendering?
3. When you hear Mickey whistling, do you not also render his red shorts and buttons?
4. If the aspects of the memory cannot be located and observed, how can the holistic memory be rendered?
At 4:04, Statement: Muscle memory doesn’t live in your muscles. This actually lives in a part of your brain called the motor cortex. That part of your brain tells all of the voluntary muscles in your body what to do. Muscle memory is the memorized choreography, the procedure for how to do things, how to brush your teeth.
Concern: We brush our teeth thousands of times throughout our lives. Can we find one memory in the brain of brushing our teeth? What would the memories be,i.e., clustered neurons, Axon patterns, or something else?
If you cannot find a memory, and we have thousands of them, how can we ever be sure of how they’re created, how they’re recalled, and how they’re restored?
If you cannot find memories in the brain, how do you know they are there? It is only an assumption that they are there, albeit a very persistent assumption. Other assumptions are made around the hippocampus and other aspects of the limbic system.
I have reviewed other videos on memory consolidation, and they are much like yours. There appear to be too many assumptions that will not pass Occam’s razor. It looks like a theory and not a functional process. It sounds very scientific but seems to have feet of clay.
Peace.
Mike
I often doubt my own episodic memories, except those I make while listening to music. I (for some reason with reasonable confidence) can recollect when I first heard pretty much any song I find I like. I wonder how auditory queues play into this. Do other senses like smell or touch play as big if not a bigger role?
Can I talk to you sir??
Interesting!
It's informative
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I read all this stuff in a Tony Robbins book 25+ years ago.
That's just your memory lying to you
@@bigthink lmao
That's exactly the problem, judges are facing every day:
Our memories for what happened are not reality...
Does this have parallels with the Casimir effect.
The unreliability of memory seems so strange and selective, and that's both fascinating and scary. I find myself adding, subtracting and modifying, with my lies being given a new lease of life. I like speculative language for that reason, because nothing is certain enough and for us to attest things with confidence, we'd need some Elon Musk level brain-rigged bodycam. A bit of a slippery slope in our build-up to a surveillance state...
Could we also journal right away when that event happens with absolute detail, in order to keep copy of the original lol?
Hey , think big,, I'm looking for a quote , vid I watched in past it was , Richard Dawkins, I think , he said something like , ten million years ago we don't recognize them as us, in ten million years into future we will be unrecognisable to the future as we are to our past ... You have it?? I've trawed through everything can't find it... Or how to text this question private
I only watched this because the photo had 2 different Pikachu, both of which didn't have the right pattern on the tail... But this photo wasn't even used in this video... Lame
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"Your memory is you, you are stupid memory"
----freidrich schtze
( Neuro psychiatrist 12th century )
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How about people with a photographic memory? What is special about them?
sometimes it has happened to me that I remember something wrong. for example, result of a big football match. how does it happen?
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These videos are chefs 😘 mama mia 🤌🏽
I'm terrified for anybody who has witnesses for their "crime" in court.
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Play at 1.5 - 1.75 if you don't want to waste time
Doesn't "same old, same old" mean the same thing as things that are repeated?
Repetition is a pretty common grammatical tool to underline something, at least that is the way I understood it.
This pretty much explains the "Mandela Effect"
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How does my sister steal my memories?
For instance, when we were very little I cut my leg sled riding; but she insists it was her. We both remember it happening to ourselves during the same event. Geez. Stop stealing my history sis :)!
Can u please provide me the pdf
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This is why Trevor said the speakers should write records
This is just one reason, among many, that I find the Bible to be a completely unreliable source of documentation of events. From the best evidence we have (e.g., even fundamentalist Christian biblical scholars agree), biblical stories were "preserved" through purely oral tradition from memory for decades and then they were written down. They were written by people from a different area than the characters in the biblical stories, who spoke a different language, who already identified with a movement the oral tradition was associated with, who had a strong emotional investment in the stories being true, who had an inaccurate set of "facts" about the world to begin with, whose stories contradict each other (read the synoptic gospels) and who had no direct witness to events in the stories catalogued together.
and then we many medications that have been designed to effect parts of the brain - cutting the links between parts of the brain, reducing our ability to remember
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فيه ذاكره الروائح ايضا
I remembered a holiday I went were I was on a 2hour horse riding expedition.......years later I found a photograph......I was on a donkey....haha
I cant remember shit when it comes to stupid details like that. As soon as i think about it too hard it slowley vanishes.
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When you see or hear traumatic events you don't forget it
You do misremember them, though. Sure, you won't forget the fear or sadness or whatever other strong emotions you felt. But the details of the event, exactly what was said, how things looked etc. will change over time and retellings.
@@DavesDime I understand that the story changes when it goes through multiple people, but I am not convinced that it changes for the person recounting it, although it can look and feel much differently looking at it as an adult rather than a child.
@@David-eu1ms That's the science, though. Of course you don't believe you are on unreliable narrator; they are YOUR memories after all.
You've never misremembered a movie or TV quote? Thought for SURE it was said one way and then been surprised to re-watch and see it was another? If you had never re-watched, you'd have been 100% convinced the way you remembered it was the way it was. That's how it is for all of our memories, only ones without documentation can't be "disproven", per se.
We're good at remembering things that are extremely emotional, for better or worse. Perhaps what's happening when people have flashbacks or PTSD is those burned-in, traumatized neural circuits get reactivated.
@@bigthink Interesting! This makes sense for major trauma like PTSD as you mention. I still imagine less-major trauma still suffers from the same imperfections. I definitely don't have total recall of things that caused me a great deal of stress in the past, even though I remember the feelings associated quite well.
My memory incorrectly thought it was Katie from college humour speaking as they sound very similar:)
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And memory has a half life. What is it for each kind of memory?
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I think of Memento by Christopher Nolan listening to this video
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😯 Memory is an art and not a science .😁😁😁😁✌️
When someone says that your memories are not real, should we ask them to define what real means to them?
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Ask them (and the author) to define what MEMORY is.
I'm the smartest man in history, and I know it's true because I have known this my whole life. Please reach out however you want for a case study in neuroscience!!!!!
Wait, if you are going to show the entire wide shot, what is the point of having a backdrop LOL
A E S T H E T I C
The missing Link. No schooling and I have hermetic understanding.
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If I remember correctly, there was a Pikachu in the thumbnail.
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فيه ذاكره فوتوغرافية
"Your identity is so closely tied to your ability to remember" Very interesting.
Empirically wrong. Does this person do more than vomit out bromides?
why the annoying music in the background?? I fucking had to mute it and read the captions
If your memory is this bad, stop distracting yourself 24/7 and pay attention to life.
It’s not about having a bad memory, it’s the simple fact that your brain isn’t perfect
$70,000 just in two weeks Mr Christine Norine Martin you are so amazing.
Same here, I started with $2,000 now earning $5,300 bi-weekly profits with her trading program.
I have heard a lot about Investments with Christine Norine Martin , how good she is and how she has helped People. Please how safe are the profits ?
I have also been trading with her, The profits are secured and over a 100% return on investment directly sent to your wallet. I made up to $56,000 in 2months trading with her
Did I mis-remember not seeing Pikachu?
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✌🏻
Y’all just gonna put Pikachu in the thumbnail and not talk about a single Pokémon?
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Bad prospective memory .. so we're all pathological liars. Great
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So basically.. the better the storyteller.. the bigger the liar🤔🙃
No offense to story-tellers🙏
was just thinking about some politicians🤪
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You or you, may lie to me, my memory is innocent. FREE Julian Assange.
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repost much?
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3rd
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Black hole is just a shadow of a planet
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Rashomon
Her voice made me stop watching this video.
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😉 Promo>SM!!
The ego driven narrative mind. Makes connections that are convenient to a cohesive narrative. Get rid of the story telling and one will have clearer access of memory.
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First 🥇
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So if your family tree has a history of exceptional memory, could you assume that you have exceptional memory as well? When linkages to Hyperthymesia are found in your children? Should I provide a link to the study between Hyperthymesia and Color Synesthesia? Or are you willing to accept the fact that unique people don’t fall under this concept?
This video has all the bells and whistles, but very little substance.
wtf are you even trying to say lmao
It's sick, it's piss, it's Genova.
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4:02 No. it ain't; the brain's a muscle. If anything, it's redundant.
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Mediocre talk about memory. Would've been more interesting and engaging by providing specific examples on how memories lie. For example, many would falsely believe that the Monopoly man wears a monocle because a monocle fits will with their stereotype of an old man in a suit from the old days. Also, the monocle seems to be an improvement on the original image based on their stereotype
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Pikachus tail, the cornucopia on fruit of the loom, the line in the Volkswagen logo, six people in the JFK vehicle, versus four and the red headband on karate kid versus a green one now.All has nothing to do with my memory and more to do with a timeline change. I owned a red karate kid headband and did a research project on JFK. This timeline is different, it has nothing to do with memory and what you're doing is so gaslighting...
btw: I'm also an artist, I drew Pikachu over a thousand times.
"Its not me that's wrong, its the world thats wrong"
Still is easier for people to understand that "memory fails" instead of "hey, you're time and reality travelling constantly just while having breakfast", ain't it?
I did research on jfk as well and have only ever known there being 4 people in the car and in the thumbnail I knew that the Pikachu with the yellow tip tail was the right one. I don't recall karate kid having any headband but if I think of karate and headband I think of red, probably because if the street fighter video game save maybe power rangers. However, I remember fruit of the loom having a cornucopia. So was my timeline changed only in regards to fruit of the loom?
His headband was white, with black detail in a "rising sun" pattern. It was Rambo who had a red headband.
5 people in the car -- JFK, Mrs. K, Connolly, Mrs. C, and the driver. Everybody forgets the driver.
You have almost got it right, if the information is totally accurate then I don't exist, which is obviously not true, you simply understand that someone else wrote down and your frail ego made you feel inferior so to feel good about yourself you decided to write the same information down in a slightly different way thinking that you explained this better than what you had read. Thank you Lisa for reminding me that education is the key to understanding and some people have no idea what to do with the key or how it is used. When you have had an original which is difficult I can assure you of that make another video and if not read to us from a book instead of a teleprompter I so enjoy fiction and I don't have time to read fiction books anymore. If you feel insulted that was not my intension, I really what you to understand what it is you think you understand.
yOuR’e LeGiTiMiZinG gAsLiGhTiNg
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Cosplay pikachu does have a black end on the tail.
Why are you shouting
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Legitimising gaslighting
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Sounds like grand scale gaslighting to me
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I see how you subliminally threw in a gay kiss in there, in an attempt to desensitize those of us that rightfully understand this to be immoral.
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This woman sounds like she's being played back at 0.75x speed.
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Absolute Bullcarp!
This verbal spew is characteristic of pop psychology and, far more troubling, the academic field on which that pop draws for it "knowledge". Just make it stop.