How Our Brains Make Memories

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

By Greg Miller
Photographs by Gilles Mingasson
Smithsonian magazine, May 2010, Subscribe

Memories are stored in a region of the brain called the hippocampus, shown in red in this computer illustration. (Photo Researchers, Inc.)

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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.

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.

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

Comments (40)

Fantastic article. For anyone further interested in changing memories without the need for pharmacological intervention, FasterEFT provides an effective solution which has helped in many cases of PTSD, amongst many other issues. It works to clear the emotional attachment that we apply to our memories and to literally change or re-imprint the memory to one that feels good. see www.fastereft.com. Sally Ulph www.newmindtherapy.co.uk

Posted by sally ulph on February 4,2013 | 03:12 PM

this was a informative arcitle

Posted by Not Needed on January 26,2013 | 06:16 PM

If you are seeking a new and different explanation of the truth that makes sense, search for "Truth Contest" in Google and click the 1st result, then click on "The Present" and read what it says. This is truth you can check. What it says will turn this world around if it reaches enough people. You will see what I mean when you read the first page.

Posted by Smiles on January 23,2013 | 07:00 PM

THANK YOU GIVING THIS VALUABLE INFORMATION

Posted by RAVALI on November 1,2012 | 11:34 AM

Im in the memories change camp. For years I had the image of my fathers tombstone set in my head with his dates of birth and dates of death and his name. When I returned dozens of years after I was suprised to find it only had the years listed. It was naturally a pretty important detail and I thought it was set in stone. Amazingly when I retold my story to my older sister she said she had also had the dates image in her head. I guess the dates January 26, 1917 and January 29 1969 were so important to us that we both added those facts. And the cemetary and death was something our family never spoke of ( or maybe I dont remember that either!)

Posted by Frose on October 3,2012 | 04:05 PM

When a man lost their memory, then how he is react.

Posted by Vashist on October 1,2012 | 02:00 PM

I beg your pardon, but this statement is wrong: "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." http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/How-Our-Brains-Make-Memories.html?c=y&page=1 My friend Pam and I had taken an Israeli tour with Zola Levitt Ministries. We had been to Petra, Galilee and were in Jerusalem on Sept. 11 when the towers were hit. We were leaving the next day and had decided to take a walk over to the King George Hotel to look the decor in the various lobbies I had heard about. A man recognized us as Americans and told us about the plane crash at the Pentagon. We hurried back to our room and turned on the news. The only news channel we had been able tto find in english was CNN. I stood in front of the TV and watched the plane crash into the second building which then fell to the ground. I am sure it was a video because of the lapse of time. We could not leave the next day because all the planes were grounded in the U.S. We had to pay for another day at the hotel and left the next day. There were videos very quickly after the event. If you want documentation of the trip, I have it. We had paid for trip insurance and they paid us back for the hotel expenses. Constance Abbott, Newport MI, 48166, U.S.A.

Posted by on September 2,2012 | 07:46 PM

The example of the plane on September 11th seems sort of ridiculous. It certainly doesn't provide new insight into how the brain processes memory. Obviously, if one were to answer without thinking too much about it, "I saw the first plane hit the tower" makes intuitive sense because to the viewer and to the world (for the first 24+ hours) the first video footage that aired within minutes of the attack WAS experienced first.

Posted by Mamie on July 11,2012 | 01:33 AM

Excellant studies!

Posted by Angela Mason on June 19,2012 | 05:53 AM

I thank it cool that u guys are all learning about the brain

Posted by on April 23,2012 | 04:00 PM

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

It seems that the concern over what footage was played when is perhaps exagerated in importance. I saw footage that day of a plane hitting the tower. I don't know whether it was the first or the second. Some of us are more intuitive in knowledge banks than sensory driven. My emotions are logged along with some of the details of the day. I remember much that is significant to what I consider important. As well I have edited much. While listening to a news report I will listen intently until something triggers a thought....I will return to the news report...quite possibly unaware of what was being said while I interrupted my listening with the experience of personal interaction with the information that just came into my mind.

I have experienced a great deal of relief from traumatic memories when I allow the context of the age and beliefs I would have had at that age to the event in question - alongside of the beliefs that I now foster about the same kind of event from the perspective of a person many years older, with input from psychology, spiritual beliefs, historical and even physical understandings. I have even chose to watch traumatic events in movies which resurrect suppressed feelings etc. and chose to bring all of this in sync with my broad perspectives on life through my faith in a Creator Who was present before time and can come present to any time. Though it is humbling that these events trigger neurological, emotional, physical and spiritual consequences - kind of like when someone dies -- indeed there are many helps available to accept this new reality - still perhaps the smell of their cologne can bring about a deep sense of loss or even a joy at what that smell represents to me the person.

The article is looking at the science behind all of this. Thus this is a narrow look, but indeed science can only reveal matter in one narrow discovery at a time. Thus it is very informative to the whole.

Posted by Maggie Beckjord on May 6,2010 | 11:46 AM

I fully buy into the fluid nature of memory recollections, but I am curious about those cases of people who have exact recall. I know there have been some recent stories about people with this ability. The interesting thing, to me anyway, is that the individuals with exact recall haven't necessarily been able to translate that ability into a successful scholastic experience. The idea the integrating thoughts into holistic understanding versus recollection of exact minute facts seems like it may be a factor. Truly innovative people I've known are able to integrate ideas across vast experiences.

Posted by Iowa Boy on May 6,2010 | 08:23 AM

If I'm interrupted when playing a piano piece from memory, I may have trouble in the future at that point in the piece, at least until I go back to the sheet music and play the interrupted "passage" from the music a few times.

Posted by Tom Gregory on May 3,2010 | 04:06 PM

During reading the article, I was just wondering if Nader's discoveries are related to the function of learning. The ability to learn is the most important feature of the brain. It is more important than remembering old staff accurately. (Only human has that need to freeze a memory for accuracy.) When we learn we need to recall the memories of previous experiences, and adjust them based the result of new activities. For example, we all have memories how skate or ski, or play a sport. Each time we do those staffs; old memories about the activities have to be refined and rewritten with new better ones. If memories were fixed, it would be very hard to correct wrong believes or ideas.

Posted by Ervin Nemesszeghy on May 1,2010 | 10:23 PM

Kyle, I'll second the suggestion that to you look up Borderline Personality Disorder. You sound quite sensible, but I'd caution against getting involved in support boards for 'victims' of people with BPD as many of them are too heavily invested in fostering hatred.

As regards the article, could this provide a plausible mechanism for NLP techniques which involve mentally replaying unpleasant memories and overlaying them with humorous soundtracks?

Posted by Ollie on May 1,2010 | 09:57 PM

"Footage of the first plane hitting the north tower aired for the first time the next day"..... Really? Really? Honestly? 'Cause I know you will say I must be mistaken, but I swear my sister called me and said "Turn on the TV, The World Trade tower has been hit by a plane... and I went over and turned it on and watched them replay the incident over and over and over that first day.

Really? Wow.... thats crazy, man. Are you sure????

Posted by nancy cassidy on April 29,2010 | 11:03 PM

thank you

Posted by Joe Yoyoda on April 25,2010 | 06:33 AM

Hi
The article ,"Making Memories", by Greg Miller touched on a statement of misperception regarding memories related to having seen a video presentation of the footage of the first plane hitting the north tower of the World Trade Center.
I do recall watching a news video that had shown a reporter doing a story on a work crew , possibly utilities or roadwork,and their was audio present. During this reporting we, the reporter and those of us watching the video, all heard a load noise overhead, comments were made and then the videographer began moving the camera searching for the source of the noise. The camera moved upward and to the left and focused on the airplane just before and when it hit the tower. I believe the camera went in and out of focus for a moment at that time.
This is what I recall and I'm certain that both airplane crashes taped that day were presented on the news broadcasts on that same day.
Perhaps if you question those 73% and ask them what was on the tape, which includes the earlier story about the utility or road workers, you might find that many will recall the earlier story and those that had watched the crash on the following day may not recall the complete video.
Worth a try. Memories can be fleeting true, but visual and experiential memories less so.
I personally recall hearing Mike Bennet on WHUD saying that he had just received a report that an airplane has crashed into a tower at the World Trade Center, while I was driving home from the post office. When I was home I watched the events leading up to the loss of two planes and the two towers and I recall watching that video of the first plane hitting the North Tower. Right or Wrong that is how I recall the news broadcasts. I also was switching channels for related videos and commentary.

Posted by Harry Rehberg on April 24,2010 | 07:30 PM

@Kyle Sounds like yoru ex was Borderline. Look it up with Google and I bet stuff will suddenly make sense to you.

Posted by Dr. Yusuf Al-Kindi on April 20,2010 | 07:09 PM

Larry Rodrigues: tongue in cheek, or, entire head deeply between cheeks?

This "everything is physical" model is comfortable to work with and fits most of our daily experiences.

The history of science tells us, thousands of times over, that the way things actually go in the world is extremely unintuitive and contrary to everyday experience.

So what you say is very wrong. Stop thinking it and stop saying it (sessions with propranolol might help).

As to NDE's, you've got 100 billion neurons operating chaotically under differing degrees if oxygen deprivation. Don't you think this is going to be a little complex?

But, really, why bother reading science articles when the urge towards magical explanations is so powerful?

Posted by Neil Schipper on April 20,2010 | 01:51 PM

The September 11 memory, while being common to all of us, is significantly altered by more information available subsequent to the initial event. In that sense, it seems to me to be a shaky example for Dr Nader's model.

Kyle, you have my sincere commiseration. You describe a significant symptom of paranoid psychosis in your ex-wife.

Rita describes a better [imo] type of "flashbulb" memory which is private and freestanding, not susceptible to subsequent modification. We may all be surprised by the sheer number of snapshots we carry around. These may be prone to embellishment upon recall, of course, but I feel that the subliminal snapshot remains fixed.

Larry, if a NDE could be observed via fMRI, who knows? Ethics sort of prevents any experimentation in this regard, and certainly in the case of a mortal event within the machine, ethics would also force the operators to terminate the scan.

Near-sleep, however....

Posted by Steve on April 20,2010 | 11:55 AM

The on the sep 11 i also show the plane hitting the tower on the same day. not the other day.

Posted by Mohamed Ahmed on April 20,2010 | 06:28 AM

The memories people describe are generally assumed to be retrieved from within their physical brain. This model is like data stored and retrieved to and from a computer's hard drive. Both cases of memory storage treat memories and data as physical objects that are placed in physical storage places. This "everything is physical" model is comfortable to work with and fits most of our daily experiences.

But what about these extraordinary cases of near death experiences (NDE) where people accurately recall scenes in operating rooms, accident locations, and etc. when their brains are shut down? Their are uncountable cases, some well researched and documented. Most NDE descriptions include accurate details as seen from outside, usually above, the physical body. Is memory detachable from the brain, and does it happen only in extraordinary circumstances such as an NDE?

And what about memories of past lives? There are some well researched cases that indicate the recalled facts are accurately recalled. Where did those memory details get stored after the past life brain died?

These questions are only meant to widen the focus of this memory research that seems to keep looking at smaller and smaller pieces of the puzzle, such as molecules jumping across microscopic spaces.

With tongue in cheek I say, "It seems that the majority of memory researchers are putting more and more attention on less and less. Pretty soon they will know everything about nothing!"

Posted by Larry Rodrigues on April 20,2010 | 05:22 AM

Interesting article on memory....I've been trying to understand why I have many memories that most people never have (1st time walking at 10mos old(actually probably before this, but I remember walking towards the garden my mother used to sit me down by and let me pick the strawberries), between the ages of 1-4yrs:getting "lost" on the beach and knowing every detail of what happened, grabbing grunions while they were spawning on the beach during a full moon, my sister carrying me to the end of the pier to show me the jellyfish, driving across country when my family moved from California to Iowa and some of the stops in between and lot's more!!!). None of these memories were triggered by conversation or pictures, but I asked my family members about them because they kept occurring as "dreams" that were so real;as if I were there again! They said "yes, all those things did occur and were surprised at the details I could tell them.

Posted by rita Martinez on April 20,2010 | 05:04 AM

Good article

Valeria Jones

Posted by Val on April 19,2010 | 01:25 AM

I've heard more and more about this idea of remembering being an opportunity for memories to evolve. I think that I've detected the phenomenon in myself and have begun to have an intuitive sense that Nader is absolutely correct.

This has helped me to understand something that was and is traumatic for me; something that totally baffled me for many years.

I found that my wife (now ex-wife) and I would rather frequently have an utterly different recollection of an event. The truly mindboggling examples were always those that had happened significantly earlier. These examples would most commonly be instances of someone having wronged her in some way. (She seemed to have a history of having been wronged very badly by many people) Of course, most of the instances with which I was also familiar involved me. I was often left speechless by her direct assertions that I had done some horrible thing or another.

She had the habit of constantly ruminating upon every slight that she felt. For extended periods, if I didn't stop her, she spent at least 30 mins./day complaining to me about her coworkers, family, retail personnel, etc. She often didn't stop with the day's events, rather she would go back and retell the same stories over and over. I thought it extremely odd that she would tell me a story that she had to have known she had told me many times and recently.

She must have believed her false accusations toward me; why else would she tell them to my face? Eventually, I was thoroughly demonized, but yet I still didnlt anticiapte what happened after the divorce. I have been so demonized that I'm a virtual monster in her eyes. At first, when she would still communicate with me, she often made ever more outrageous claims about me - to my face. There was no doubt that she was incessantly making them to others. When we no longer communicated, I'm quite sure that the accusations (which are her actual memories) continued to escalate.

Not only has she convinced her family that I'm a monster, she has apparently convinced the children of some things as well. She's misused the legal system to harrass me with false charges. She was very successful in the end. I was bankrupted by legal costs while she had none at all. I even spent a couple of hours in jail for the "crime" of leaving Christmas gifts for my grandchildren on their great aunt's stoop on Christmas eve.

I've not seen my children or grandschildren in 3-1/2 years and have resigned myself to the likelihood that I never will see them again.

The pain, frustration, and sadness of this was compounded because none of it made any sense to me. In a strange way, I've been helped in getting on with my life by the knowledge of why and how all of this happened.

If Dr. Nader would like to study such extreme examples of evidence for his hypothesis, perhaps he might consider studying her.

Posted by Kyle on April 19,2010 | 07:41 PM

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