How Our Brains Make Memories

Surprising new research about the act of remembering may help people with post-traumatic stress disorder

  • By Greg Miller
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Memory hippocampus brain Memories are stored in a region of the brain called the hippocampus, shown in red in this computer illustration.

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    How Our Brains Make Memories

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    Sitting at a sidewalk café in Montreal on a sunny morning, Karim Nader recalls the day eight years earlier when two planes slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. He lights a cigarette and waves his hands in the air to sketch the scene.

    At the time of the attack, Nader was a postdoctoral researcher at New York University. He flipped the radio on while getting ready to go to work and heard the banter of the morning disc jockeys turn panicky as they related the events unfolding in Lower Manhattan. Nader ran to the roof of his apartment building, where he had a view of the towers less than two miles away. He stood there, stunned, as they burned and fell, thinking to himself, “No way, man. This is the wrong movie.”

    In the following days, Nader recalls, he passed through subway stations where walls were covered with notes and photographs left by people searching desperately for missing loved ones. “It was like walking upstream in a river of sorrow,” he says.

    Like millions of people, Nader has vivid and emotional memories of the September 11, 2001, attacks and their aftermath. But as an expert on memory, and, in particular, on the malleability of memory, he knows better than to fully trust his recollections.

    Most people have so-called flashbulb memories of where they were and what they were doing when something momentous happened: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, say, or the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. (Unfortunately, staggeringly terrible news seems to come out of the blue more often than staggeringly good news.) But as clear and detailed as these memories feel, psychologists find they are surprisingly inaccurate.

    Nader, now a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, says his memory of the World Trade Center attack has played a few tricks on him. He recalled seeing television footage on September 11 of the first plane hitting the north tower of the World Trade Center. But he was surprised to learn that such footage aired for the first time the following day. Apparently he wasn’t alone: a 2003 study of 569 college students found that 73 percent shared this misperception.

    Nader believes he may have an explanation for such quirks of memory. His ideas are unconventional within neuroscience, and they have caused researchers to reconsider some of their most basic assumptions about how memory works. In short, Nader believes that the very act of remembering can change our memories.

    Much of his research is on rats, but he says the same basic principles apply to human memory as well. In fact, he says, it may be impossible for humans or any other animal to bring a memory to mind without altering it in some way. Nader thinks it’s likely that some types of memory, such as a flashbulb memory, are more susceptible to change than others. Memories surrounding a major event like September 11 might be especially susceptible, he says, because we tend to replay them over and over in our minds and in conversation with others—with each repetition having the potential to alter them.


    Sitting at a sidewalk café in Montreal on a sunny morning, Karim Nader recalls the day eight years earlier when two planes slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. He lights a cigarette and waves his hands in the air to sketch the scene.

    At the time of the attack, Nader was a postdoctoral researcher at New York University. He flipped the radio on while getting ready to go to work and heard the banter of the morning disc jockeys turn panicky as they related the events unfolding in Lower Manhattan. Nader ran to the roof of his apartment building, where he had a view of the towers less than two miles away. He stood there, stunned, as they burned and fell, thinking to himself, “No way, man. This is the wrong movie.”

    In the following days, Nader recalls, he passed through subway stations where walls were covered with notes and photographs left by people searching desperately for missing loved ones. “It was like walking upstream in a river of sorrow,” he says.

    Like millions of people, Nader has vivid and emotional memories of the September 11, 2001, attacks and their aftermath. But as an expert on memory, and, in particular, on the malleability of memory, he knows better than to fully trust his recollections.

    Most people have so-called flashbulb memories of where they were and what they were doing when something momentous happened: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, say, or the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. (Unfortunately, staggeringly terrible news seems to come out of the blue more often than staggeringly good news.) But as clear and detailed as these memories feel, psychologists find they are surprisingly inaccurate.

    Nader, now a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, says his memory of the World Trade Center attack has played a few tricks on him. He recalled seeing television footage on September 11 of the first plane hitting the north tower of the World Trade Center. But he was surprised to learn that such footage aired for the first time the following day. Apparently he wasn’t alone: a 2003 study of 569 college students found that 73 percent shared this misperception.

    Nader believes he may have an explanation for such quirks of memory. His ideas are unconventional within neuroscience, and they have caused researchers to reconsider some of their most basic assumptions about how memory works. In short, Nader believes that the very act of remembering can change our memories.

    Much of his research is on rats, but he says the same basic principles apply to human memory as well. In fact, he says, it may be impossible for humans or any other animal to bring a memory to mind without altering it in some way. Nader thinks it’s likely that some types of memory, such as a flashbulb memory, are more susceptible to change than others. Memories surrounding a major event like September 11 might be especially susceptible, he says, because we tend to replay them over and over in our minds and in conversation with others—with each repetition having the potential to alter them.

    For those of us who cherish our memories and like to think they are an accurate record of our history, the idea that memory is fundamentally malleable is more than a little disturbing. Not all researchers believe Nader has proved that the process of remembering itself can alter memories. But if he is right, it may not be an entirely bad thing. It might even be possible to put the phenomenon to good use to reduce the suffering of people with post-traumatic stress disorder, who are plagued by recurring memories of events they wish they could put behind them.

    Nader was born in Cairo, Egypt. His Coptic Christian family faced persecution at the hands of Arab nationalists and fled to Canada in 1970, when he was 4 years old. Many relatives also made the trip, so many that Nader’s girlfriend teases him about the “soundtrack of a thousand kisses” at large family gatherings as people bestow customary greetings.

    He attended college and graduate school at the University of Toronto, and in 1996 joined the New York University lab of Joseph LeDoux, a distinguished neuroscientist who studies how emotions influence memory. “One of the things that really seduced me about science is that it’s a system you can use to test your own ideas about how things work,” Nader says. Even the most cherished ideas in a given field are open to question.

    Scientists have long known that recording a memory requires adjusting the connections between neurons. Each memory tweaks some tiny subset of the neurons in the brain (the human brain has 100 billion neurons in all), changing the way they communicate. Neurons send messages to one another across narrow gaps called synapses. A synapse is like a bustling port, complete with machinery for sending and receiving cargo—neurotransmitters, specialized chemicals that convey signals between neurons. All of the shipping machinery is built from proteins, the basic building blocks of cells.

    One of the scientists who has done the most to illuminate the way memory works on the microscopic scale is Eric Kandel, a neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York City. In five decades of research, Kandel has shown how short-term memories—those lasting a few minutes—involve relatively quick and simple chemical changes to the synapse that make it work more efficiently. Kandel, who won a share of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, found that to build a memory that lasts hours, days or years, neurons must manufacture new proteins and expand the docks, as it were, to make the neurotransmitter traffic run more efficiently. Long-term memories must literally be built into the brain’s synapses. Kandel and other neuroscientists have generally assumed that once a memory is constructed, it is stable and can’t easily be undone. Or, as they put it, the memory is “consolidated.”

    According to this view, the brain’s memory system works something like a pen and notebook. For a brief time before the ink dries, it’s possible to smudge what’s written. But after the memory is consolidated, it changes very little. Sure, memories may fade over the years like an old letter (or even go up in flames if Alzheimer’s disease strikes), but under ordinary circumstances the content of the memory stays the same, no matter how many times it’s taken out and read. Nader would challenge this idea.

    In what turned out to be a defining moment in his early career, Nader attended a lecture that Kandel gave at New York University about how memories are recorded. Nader got to wondering about what happens when a memory is recalled. Work with rodents dating back to the 1960s didn’t jibe with the consolidation theory. Researchers had found that a memory could be weakened if they gave an animal an electric shock or a drug that interferes with a particular neurotransmitter just after they prompted the animal to recall the memory. This suggested that memories were vulnerable to disruption even after they had been consolidated.

    To think of it another way, the work suggested that filing an old memory away for long-term storage after it had been recalled was surprisingly similar to creating it the first time. Both building a new memory and tucking away an old one presumably involved building proteins at the synapse. The researchers had named that process “reconsolidation.” But others, including some prominent memory experts, had trouble replicating those findings in their own laboratories, so the idea wasn’t pursued.

    Nader decided to revisit the concept with an experiment. In the winter of 1999, he taught four rats that a high-pitched beep preceded a mild electric shock. That was easy—rodents learn such pairings after being exposed to them just once. Afterward, the rat freezes in place when it hears the tone. Nader then waited 24 hours, played the tone to reactivate the memory and injected into the rat’s brain a drug that prevents neurons from making new proteins.

    If memories are consolidated just once, when they are first created, he reasoned, the drug would have no effect on the rat’s memory of the tone or on the way it would respond to the tone in the future. But if memories have to be at least partially rebuilt every time they are recalled—down to the synthesizing of fresh neuronal proteins—rats given the drug might later respond as if they had never learned to fear the tone and would ignore it. If so, the study would contradict the standard conception of memory. It was, he admits, a long shot.

    “Don’t waste your time, this will never work,” LeDoux told him.

    It worked.

    When Nader later tested the rats, they didn’t freeze after hearing the tone: it was as if they’d forgotten all about it. Nader, who looks slightly devilish in his earring and pointed sideburns, still gets giddy talking about the experiment. Eyes wide with excitement, he slaps the café table. “This is crazy, right? I went into Joe’s office and said, ‘I know it’s just four animals, but this is very encouraging!’”

    After Nader’s initial findings, some neuroscientists pooh-poohed his work in journal articles and gave him the cold shoulder at scientific meetings. But the data struck a more harmonious chord with some psychologists. After all, their experiments had long suggested that memory can easily be distorted without people realizing it.

    In a classic 1978 study led by Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist then at the University of Washington, researchers showed college students a series of color photographs depicting an accident in which a red Datsun car knocks down a pedestrian in a crosswalk. The students answered various questions, some of which were intentionally misleading. For instance, even though the photographs had shown the Datsun at a stop sign, the researchers asked some of the students, “Did another car pass the red Datsun while it was stopped at the yield sign?”

    Later the researchers asked all the students what they had seen—a stop sign or yield sign? Students who’d been asked a misleading question were more likely to give an incorrect answer than the other students.

    To Nader and his colleagues, the experiment supports the idea that a memory is re-formed in the process of calling it up. “From our perspective, this looks a lot like memory reconsolidation,” says Oliver Hardt, a postdoctoral researcher in Nader’s lab.

    Hardt and Nader say something similar might happen with flashbulb memories. People tend to have accurate memories for the basic facts of a momentous event—for example, that a total of four planes were hijacked in the September 11 attacks—but often misremember personal details such as where they were and what they were doing at the time. Hardt says this could be because these are two different types of memories that get reactivated in different situations. Television and other media coverage reinforce the central facts. But recalling the experience to other people may allow distortions to creep in. “When you retell it, the memory becomes plastic, and whatever is present around you in the environment can interfere with the original content of the memory,” Hardt says. In the days following September 11, for example, people likely repeatedly rehashed their own personal stories—“where were you when you heard the news?”—in conversations with friends and family, perhaps allowing details of other people’s stories to mix with their own.

    Since Nader’s original experiment, dozens of studies with rats, worms, chicks, honeybees and college students have suggested that even long-standing memories can be disrupted when recalled. Nader’s goal is to tie the animal research, and the clues it yields about the bustling molecular machinery of the synapse, to the everyday human experience of remembering.

    Some experts think he is getting ahead of himself, especially when he makes connections between human memory and these findings in rats and other animals. “He oversells it a little bit,” says Kandel.

    Daniel Schacter, a psychologist at Harvard University who studies memory, agrees with Nader that distortions can occur when people reactivate memories. The question is whether reconsolidation—which he thinks Nader has demonstrated compellingly in rat experiments—is the reason for the distortions. “The direct evidence isn’t there yet to show that the two things are related,” Schacter says. “It’s an intriguing possibility that people will now have to follow up on.”

    A real-world test of Nader’s theory of memory reconsolidation is taking place a few miles from his Montreal office, at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute. Alain Brunet, a psychologist, is running a clinical trial involving people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The hope is that caregivers might be able to weaken the hold of traumatic memories that haunt patients during the day and invade their dreams at night.

    Brunet knows how powerful traumatic memories can be. In 1989, when he was studying for a master’s degree in psychology at the University of Montreal, a man armed with a semiautomatic rifle walked into an engineering classroom on campus, separated the men from the women and shot the women. The gunman continued the massacre in other classrooms and hallways of the university’s École Polytechnique, shooting 27 people and killing 14 women before killing himself. It was Canada’s worst mass shooting.

    Brunet, who was on the other side of campus that day, says, “this was a very powerful experience for me.” He says he was surprised to discover how little was known at the time about the psychological impact of such events and how to help people who’ve lived through them. He decided to study traumatic stress and how to treat it.

    Even now, Brunet says, the drugs and psychotherapy conventionally used to treat PTSD do not provide lasting relief for many patients. “There’s still plenty of room for the discovery of better treatments,” he says.

    In Brunet’s first study, PTSD patients took a drug intended to interfere with the reconsolidation of fearful memories. The drug, propranolol, has long been used to treat high blood pressure, and some performers take it to combat stage fright. The drug inhibits a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine. One possible side effect of the drug is memory loss. (In a study similar to Nader’s original experiment with rats, researchers in LeDoux’s lab have found that the drug can weaken fearful memories of a high-pitched tone.)

    The patients in Brunet’s study, published in 2008, had each experienced a traumatic event, such as a car accident, assault or sexual abuse, about a decade earlier. They began a therapy session sitting alone in a nondescript room with a well-worn armchair and a television. Nine patients took a propranolol pill and read or watched TV for an hour as the drug took effect. Ten were given a placebo pill.

    Brunet came into the room and made small talk before telling the patient he had a request: he wanted the patient to read a script, based on earlier interviews with the person, describing his or her traumatic experience. The patients, all volunteers, knew that the reading would be part of the experiment. “Some are fine, some start to cry, some need to take a break,” Brunet says.

    A week later, the PTSD patients listened to the script, this time without taking the drug or a placebo. Compared with the patients who had taken a placebo, those who had taken the propranolol a week earlier were now calmer; they had a smaller uptick in their heart rate and they perspired less.

    Brunet has just completed a larger study with nearly 70 PTSD patients. Those who took propranolol once a week for six weeks while reading the script of their traumatic event showed an average 50 percent reduction in standard PTSD symptoms. They had fewer nightmares and flashbacks in their daily lives long after the effects of the drug had worn off. The treatment didn’t erase the patients’ memory of what had happened to them; rather, it seems to have changed the quality of that memory. “Week after week the emotional tone of the memory seems weaker,” Brunet says. “They start to care less about that memory.”

    Nader says the traumatic memories of PTSD patients may be stored in the brain in much the same way that a memory of a shock-predicting tone is stored in a rat’s brain. In both cases, recalling the memory opens it to manipulation. Nader says he’s encouraged by the work so far with PTSD patients. “If it’s got any chance of helping people, we have to give it a shot,” he says.

    Among the many questions that Nader is now pursuing is whether all memories become vulnerable when recalled, or only certain memories under certain circumstances.

    Of course, there is the even bigger question: why are memories so unreliable? After all, if they were less subject to change we wouldn’t suffer the embarrassment of misremembering the details of an important conversation or a first date.

    Then again, editing might be another way to learn from experience. If fond memories of an early love weren’t tempered by the knowledge of a disastrous breakup, or if recollections of difficult times weren’t offset by knowledge that things worked out in the end, we might not reap the benefits of these hard-earned life lessons. Perhaps it’s better if we can rewrite our memories every time we recall them. Nader suggests that reconsolidation may be the brain’s mechanism for recasting old memories in the light of everything that has happened since. In other words, it just might be what keeps us from living in the past.

    Greg Miller writes about biology, behavior and neuroscience for Science magazine. He lives in San Francisco. Gilles Mingasson is a photographer based in Los Angeles.


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    Additional Sources

    “Effect of post-retrieval propranolol on psychophysiologic responding during subsequent script-driven traumatic imagery in post-traumatic stress disorder,” Alain Brunet et al., Journal of Psychiatric Research, May 2008

    “Disruption of reconsolidation but not consolidation of auditory fear conditioning by noradrenergic blockade in the amygdala,” J. Dębiec and J. E. LeDoux, Neuroscience, October 2, 2004

    “Event Memory and Autobiographical Memory for the Events of September 11, 2001,” Kathy Pezdek, Applied Cognitive Psychology, January 8, 2004

    “Fear memories require protein synthesis in the amygdala for reconsolidation after retrieval,” Karim Nader et al., Nature, August 17, 2000

    “Reconsolidation of memory after its reactivation,” Jean Przybyslawski and Susan J. Sara, Behavioural Brain Research, March 1997

    “Semantic Integration of Verbal Information into a Visual Memory,” Elizabeth F. Loftus et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology, January 1978

    “Retrograde Amnesia Produced by Electroconvulsive Shock after Reactivation of a Consolidated Memory Trace,” James R. Misanin et al., Science, May 3, 1968


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    Comments (30)

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    Some of us have a near "photographic" memory. I often end up in minor arguments with my wife as her memory modifies itself over time - usually in a direction which makes HER the "perfect" one and whatever happened "my fault."

    She's even gone so far as to accuse me of falsifying papers or even modifying a videotape to support "my version of events."

    She literally has trouble accurately remembering what she had for breakfast while I can "see" minute details of things years later.

    On the other hand, she REALLY scrambles me up when she "helps me" by "putting my stuff away (read: where SHE wants it) for me.

    If she'd left it wherever I put it, I can find it by "zooming out" on my mental image of whatever "it" is.

    When she moves it, it's usually LOST as she'll usually have no idea where she decided it "belongs" when asked to retrieve it later.

    I'm convinced that such matters are at times - with folks possessing less self-control - a recurring cause of serious marital conflict...

    Posted by Dedicated_Dad on December 18,2011 | 04:53 PM

    Speaking Of Memory And Of Culture-Genetics

    A. From “Speaking of Memory, Eric Kandel”
    http://the-scientist.com/2011/10/01/interview-speaking-of-memory/

    Are there unanswerable questions in neuroscience; ones that should be left to philosophers and poets?
    Who’s to know what will emerge 50 to 100 years from now. But for the foreseeable future I think it’s our lack of ingenuity that is limiting, not the intrinsic difficulties; the problems are difficult—but not insurmountable. Even love?
    I think there’ll always be magic to life, even though science explains a great deal.

    B. BioCulture
    June 16, 2006
    http://universe-life.com/2006/06/16/bioculture/

    To paraphrase a statement by Eugene Thacker in the opening pages of Biomedia (ISBN 0-8166-4353-9):
    I posit that as every organism's cultural element is an artifact which involves biological intra-/inter-cell expression and/or process, biological and cultural domains are not ontologically distinct, but instead culture inheres in biology. Dov Henis

    C. On “our lack of ingenuity” and “science explains”

    Bigger Human Brain, Horses And Wagon
    http://universe-life.com/2011/10/19/bigger-human-brain-horse-and-wagon/

    On Culture And Genetics, Horses And Wagon
    http://universe-life.com/2011/08/26/on-culture-and-genetics-horses-and-wagon/
    If you saw it once, you saw it a million times: it’s the horses pulling, not the wagon pushing !

    Dov Henis
    (comments from 22nd century)
    http://universe-life.com/

    Posted by Dov Henis on November 18,2011 | 11:14 AM

    I don't see how thinking you saw the first plane hit the tower on 9/11, when you really saw the second plane says that memory place tricks on us. Here's the footage that aired on 9/11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys41jnL2Elk

    Had it been labelled "this is the second plane" then we might have some pretty conclusive evidence.

    So far, the Challenger and 9/11 tragedies have been used to try to prove that memory is faulty. Which national tragedy is next?

    Posted by Lynn Murphy on May 15,2011 | 02:38 PM

    Neither Nader's nor Brunet's study as discussed in this article proves that memories can be reconsolidated.

    Nader's studies shows that rats didn't react after hearing a tone. There are many possible explanations for this. Perhaps the emotional component of the memory was weakened, but the memory still existed. And rats aren't human beings.

    Brunet's study stated "The treatment didn’t erase the patients’ memory of what had happened to them; rather, it seems to have changed the quality of that memory. “Week after week the emotional tone of the memory seems weaker,” Brunet says. “They start to care less about that memory.”

    In other words, the memory was still there.

    As per these studies, the theory of memory reconsolidation is unproven.

    And it is quite different to give an animal an electric shock or a drug that interferes with a particular neurotransmitter just after they were prompted to recall the memory and then to compare this to simple suggestion or misleading questions in humans.

    The Loftus study as quoted in this article questioned peripheral memories, but not the major important details of the memory. Some memory theorists have believed that peripheral details may be subject to manipulation but the major details are not.

    The accuracy of Loftus' work has also been questioned, see http://users.owt.com/crook/memory/

    A good resource on the neurobiology of memory is http://www.trauma-pages.com/a/vanderk2.php which discusses the stability and accuracy of memories of stressful events

    Posted by E. Stricker on May 14,2011 | 02:52 PM

    Modern science is very confused about the laws of the structure of memory .

    Posted by demetrios corinthius on May 10,2011 | 02:11 AM

    I think those spending time on 'doubt' of footage played on September 11th are missing a simple part of the point made and may benefit from some simple clarification - yes we ALL saw footage ON September 11th, of the SECOND plane hit. We all saw that. We all remember where we were when we saw it. We ALL saw the damage of the first plane and the footage of it. What the article is saying is that the footage of the FIRST plane in flight and then ACTUALLY IMPACTING the first tower wasn't shown until the next day.

    Now you can focus on the rest of the article:)

    Posted by A McKinley on February 23,2011 | 04:09 PM

    Seems to add support to the concept that hindsight is 20/20.

    Posted by Don on November 18,2010 | 11:38 AM

    Memory, a word so simple an issue as complex and covers language, intellectual ability or simple facts of daily life, memory, intelligence gives us is a concept that covers too much from a scientific sense, bringing it to everyday life. Speaking of memory must say that it is a very complex subject and many authors present different theories about its operating structure. We can say that memory is not one, but there are several types of this, talking about these types of memory often helps to understand that humanity forgets things, or why the call in his mind and no one understands q is that synaptic activity in long-term memory is faster, so the memories come back to the subconscious mind even though this event has already occurred for some considerable time. Constantly exposing our memories, or rather recalling an event sometimes causes varied each time the fence remember every memory modifying modifies the memory, but this does not seem to bring a big problem in people so that any event that is traumatic for their lives changed and eventually he will forget it, avoiding its own suffering in the future. The blog covers topics essential to the neurological study of people also need to expose these issues for society to be educated and learn to know their behaviors and attitudes, we all take to make real awareness of the importance of the concept of memory in our lives, without the need for scientists, but only to know our body and its reactions and ways of relating to our environment.

    francisca andrade
    maria jose cañete
    students of catolica maule university

    Posted by maria jose and francisca on July 29,2010 | 11:49 PM

    Very Interesting.

    Posted by Sonya on July 1,2010 | 01:27 PM

    The 9/11 example seems to point to a process of restructuring a sequence of events as new information is attained. Also, the media reconstructed the sequence of events for us as they attained new information.

    Posted by Oster on June 7,2010 | 12:17 AM

    Now thwy can give the propranolol to the unfortunate rats to help them get over their trauma - yeah, right. Doesn't this research also knock a last nail (if one were needed) into the wretched business of psychoanalysis?

    Posted by cavall de quer on May 16,2010 | 11:06 AM

    Kyle, your wife sounds alot like me and I hope you are not as dishonest with her as most people are with me Maybe she is really being threatened or feels it or senses it I have the same problems she does and everyone feels I am being childish, selfish,hateful, and paranoid or hearing things But they fail to admit what I know most of the time I refuse to believe my hearing is that bad or I am the most horrible person around Too many people thrive on retaliation and harrasing these days Many times, it is the victim who suffers instead of the perpertrator I can't even get help for my emotional response to this disorder in my daily life because the health field considers I just need to look on the bright side I'm sure you're wife would know what that feels like also I hope she is not in the same pre dicament I am and that is I am not neurotic so much as no will be truthful with me

    Posted by D K on May 13,2010 | 01:25 PM

    Consider this true, personal history of an elderly woman:

    Kyle is right on target about "remembering" and retelling over and over and over events that are absolute lies to other people....and how it affects the memories of some of those other people. [Our politicians are masters of this]

    "My ex-husband, a convicted felon, thief and murderer, told our younger daughter that he went to prison because his ex- wife was a harlot who slept "with every man in town" over and over and over. Now at 46 she is an alcoholic who gets drunk and calls me to repeat these lies (as his demonic self has this woman under his control.) Her older sister, also raised by me alone, is a successful, international business woman! She wrote him in prison that she never wanted to see him again...and probably had much less contact in her adult life with this human devil."

    The demonic influence exerted over another human is tragic. Could it possibly be resultant in some way by Jung's theory of supernatural universal conscience?

    Posted by Ann on May 11,2010 | 12:03 PM

    I learned about the 911 attacks when my daughter called me that morning to ask if I was watching the television. When I said "No, I am having my first cup of coffee late today" she had me turn the TV on while we were on the phone. We watched "together" as the second plane hit the tower, while news cameras were focused on the damage done by the first plane. We had been discussing whether this was a terrible accident or something intentional and I remarked when the second plane hit "Oh, no, it's real-we're under attack!" Three quarters of folks who experienced similar events can't be that wrong. Might be worth checking the records of the major news networks!

    Posted by Robin Burns on May 6,2010 | 11:59 AM

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