In 2013, an article by Oliver Sacks appeared in The New York Review of Books titled Speak, Memory, which is also the title of a memoir written by Vladimir Nabokov.
In his article, Sacks wrote:
[A]pproaching my sixtieth birthday, I started to experience a curious phenomenon—the spontaneous, unsolicited rising of early memories into my mind, memories that had lain dormant for upward of fifty years. Not merely memories, but frames of mind, thoughts, atmospheres, and passions associated with them—memories, especially, of my boyhood in London before World War II.
As a result of these recollections, Sacks penned a couple of short memoirs, which spurred him on to write something more extensive, and several years later, he began a three-year project that was published in 2001 asUncle Tungsten, a memoir of his boyhood.
I expected some deficiencies of memory—partly because the events I was writing about had occurred fifty or more years earlier, and most of those who might have shared their memories, or checked my facts, were now dead; and partly because, in writing about the first fifteen years of my life, I could not call on the letters and notebooks that I started to keep, assiduously, from the age of eighteen or so.
I accepted that I must have forgotten or lost a great deal, but assumed that the memories I did have—especially those that were very vivid, concrete, and circumstantial—were essentially valid and reliable; and it was a shock to me when I found that some of them were not.
Autobiographical Memory
When we use the word memory, we assume we know what we’re talking about and that everyone else does, too. We don’t normally distinguish between the different types of memory, such as short-term (or working) memory and long-term memory; implicit and explicit memory; declarative memory and procedural memory (a/k/a motor skills); semantic (factual) memory and episodic (experiential) memory.
Memory is critical to our survival as well as to our sense of self. It might even be said that we are what we remember about ourselves—and what we remember about ourselves is, of course, our autobiographical memory.
In Uncle Tungsten, Sacks recalled two bomb incidents from the winter of 1940-1941 and described both in great detail. After the book was published, his older brother confirmed the details of the first incident, but as for the second, he told Sacks, “You never saw it. You weren’t there.”
I was staggered by Michael’s words. How could he dispute a memory I would not hesitate to swear on in a court of law, and had never doubted as real? “What do you mean” I objected. “I can see the bomb in my mind’s eye now, Pa with his pump, and Marcus and David with their buckets of water. How could I see it so clearly if I wasn’t there?”
It turned out that another brother, who had been present when the incident occurred, had written Sacks “a very vivid, dramatic letter” about it.
Clearly, I had not only been enthralled [by the letter], but must have constructed the scene in my mind, from David’s words, and then appropriated it, and taken it for a memory of my own.
Sacks then sought to compare both memories—the true one and the false one—looking for “a different quality” in the second one, some evidence to indicate it had been appropriated.
But although I now know, intellectually, that this memory was “false,” it still seems to me as real, as intensely my own, as before.
Lost in a Mall
That wouldn’t be at all surprising to memory researchers (or memory hackers, as some of them prefer to be called) like Elizabeth Loftus (co-author of the “lost in a mall” study) or Julia Shaw, who have managed to implant false memories in numerous individuals. In one research experiment, close to 50% of participants came to accept a totally fabricated memory of having taken a ride in a hot air balloon.
When vivid memories are examined in the brain using fMRI, no difference has been observed. The same amount of activation can be seen in sensory areas, limbic areas, and frontal lobe areas, no matter whether the memory is true or false.
Memory is unreliable and easily manipulated, both intentionally and unintentionally. This holds true even for so-called flashbulb memories, the intense memories involving strong emotion. Memory is not a video recording or a photo album or an accurate transcription of what actually happened. It is both constructive and reconstructive. Our memories of what happened define us—but we are engaged in a continuous process of redefining our memories.
But why? And how? And why do we have such a seemingly dysfunctional system for retaining and recalling past experiences? If you’re interested in learing more about the illusions and delusions of memory, please join us for the next MONTHLY MEETING OF THE MIND (& BRAIN).