Neuroscience: Rules of memory formation may be rewritten

Opty · Apr 16, 2017

Usually when we teach the ins and outs of memory formation to students, we tend to use the old standard model of "encode, store, and retrieve" to explain memory processes. In other words, sensory input gets encoded by the brain into useable information, that information goes through the short term memory (STM) and the hippocampus (and amygdala), and eventually shuttled off to long term memory (LTM), from which we can later retrieve it.

Usually, I just tell the students that it goes from your senses to your short term memory and then through some sort of "brain magic" it gets turned into long term memory somewhere, out there, in the cortex...and then just hope that nobody asks any questions. How does the brain do this? Hell if I know. "Brain magic" seems as good an answer as any. And, really, nobody else knows, either.

Until now, it seems. And, what we thought we knew about memory might have been wrong this entire time.

What really happens when we make and store memories has been unravelled in a discovery that surprised even the scientists who made it.

The US and Japanese team found that the brain "doubles up" by simultaneously making two memories of events.
One is for the here-and-now and the other for a lifetime, they found. It had been thought that all memories start as a short-term memory and are then slowly converted into a long-term one.

Experts said the findings were surprising, but also beautiful and convincing.

The finding that the brain seems to make two different types of memories simultaneously is incredibly eye-opening, and makes a lot more sense than the model of memory we've been working under for decades.

Anyway, this finding still needs to be replicated before anything definitive can be said but its implications are vast.

As much as we know about the brain (and we do know quite a lot), there's also so much we don't know. And, apparently, some stuff we thought we kind of know is stuff that we might actually have totally wrong.

News article: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-39518580

Study abstract (for you academic types): http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6333/73

Pretty cool blog post about it that puts it in plain English: http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/new-study-on-long-term-memory/

Introversion · Apr 16, 2017

Interesting!

dickson · Apr 16, 2017

Very interesting. After reading the abstract of the Science paper, I wonder if I should join AAAS after all. Wouldn't want to subscribe to Science-I have too many subscriptions as it is-but it would be nice to be able to download the really juicy papers.

MRFAndover · Apr 16, 2017

Thanks for these links and the brief description. I had bookmarked this in Feedly, but I rarely remember to read my saved articles.

onesecondglance · Apr 17, 2017

This is super interesting stuff.

Bacchus · Apr 17, 2017

I expect this goes a long way towards explaining "deja vu"

cmhbob · Apr 17, 2017

I just read a similar piece over at Motherboard, it turns out. Julia Shaw figured out how easily we can implant false memories. That article is from September. Gizmodo had a linked discussion over a year ago, too.

liritha · Apr 17, 2017

This is super interesting, thanks for sharing!

cmhbob, the article on false memories is fascinating. I had a module on them at uni (in relation to both memory encoding and eye witness testimony). Interesting how this new theory of memory might explain the false memory creation.

cornflake · Apr 17, 2017

cmhbob said:
I just read a similar piece over at Motherboard, it turns out. Julia Shaw figured out how easily we can implant false memories. That article is from September. Gizmodo had a linked discussion over a year ago, too.

Sorry, but no, she did not. Elizabeth Loftus did. Shaw seems to have written a popsci book on what is longstanding science -- granted ever-evolving, and she does seem to have done some research in the field, but the field owes itself to Loftus, less a tv scientist than a working one.

Opty · Apr 17, 2017

cornflake said:
Sorry, but no, she did not. Elizabeth Loftus did. Shaw seems to have written a popsci book on what is longstanding science -- granted ever-evolving, and she does seem to have done some research in the field, but the field owes itself to Loftus, less a tv scientist than a working one.

Yeah, I was gonna say the same. I have no idea who Shaw is, but Loftus is the most well-known, influential female psychologist in the world and made those discoveries about false memory a decade before Shaw was even born.

If I recall correctly, her earliest experiments involved creating a false childhood memory in participants of getting separated from their mothers and lost in a retail store.

cornflake · Apr 17, 2017

Yep -- along with one about being in a traffic accident, seeing stuff recently, etc. The lost-in-the-store one people folded into their histories and enhanced, adding specific, unprovided details, etc. Same with others.

There is now tons of research about this kind of thing, specific to a whole variety of stuff, like eyewitnesses (drunk eyewitnesses are better than sober), flashbulb memories (people think they're much 'stronger' and more reliable; they're not), false confession (which is a field onto itself), etc., but the field exists because of Loftus' decades of pioneering work.

Roxxsmom · Apr 17, 2017

Interesting article. Thanks for sharing.

I notice the specific reference was to contextual fear memory. Would these be encoded via the same process as other kinds of memory?

Myrealana · Apr 17, 2017

I have personal experience with memory hacking - as in I have a known false memory.

It's not childhood trauma or alien abduction or anything so interesting. It's an incident from not long after we moved into our house on Union Drive. A couple I'd never seen before showed up saying they were my husband's aunt and uncle and some amusing conversation passed before we figured out that they were talking about an entirely different Jon, who lived on Union PLACE.

Only, it didn't happen to me. It happened to my husband. He told me about it, and for some reason, it became my story. On the one hand, I know intellectually that it didn't happen to me. On the other hand, I can SEE the people, describe their car, their clothes, their voices. I remember pointing to their printed MapQuest map and showing them where they took the wrong turn. I could describe them to a police artist and pick them out of a lineup if I had to.

The human brain is a funny thing.

cornflake · Apr 17, 2017

Myrealana said:
I have personal experience with memory hacking - as in I have a known false memory.

It's not childhood trauma or alien abduction or anything so interesting. It's an incident from not long after we moved into our house on Union Drive. A couple I'd never seen before showed up saying they were my husband's aunt and uncle and some amusing conversation passed before we figured out that they were talking about an entirely different Jon, who lived on Union PLACE.

Only, it didn't happen to me. It happened to my husband. He told me about it, and for some reason, it became my story. On the one hand, I know intellectually that it didn't happen to me. On the other hand, I can SEE the people, describe their car, their clothes, their voices. I remember pointing to their printed MapQuest map and showing them where they took the wrong turn. I could describe them to a police artist and pick them out of a lineup if I had to.

The human brain is a funny thing.

This is precisely why things like eyewitnesses are so hard to combat. They're largely useless; we know they are, and it's hardly news. However, no matter how much science you show a jury, how many times you tell people eyewitnesses are unreliable, with evidence and powerpoints and studies for days, people still believe their own memories (because obviously) and thus believe other people's.

Opty · Apr 17, 2017

Roxxsmom said:
Interesting article. Thanks for sharing.

I notice the specific reference was to contextual fear memory. Would these be encoded via the same process as other kinds of memory?

We're still not certain how exactly the brain encodes information. We know a little bit, though. Although most memory is processed through the hippocampus, fear-based memories usually involve more activation of the amygdala, thus those memories tend to be stronger (easier to recall/retrieve/recognize). So, when doing this type of research, it's usually easiest to study fear-type reactions, because the brain "lights up" - so to speak - in a stronger way than other types of memory processes.

Opty · Apr 17, 2017

Myrealana said:
I have personal experience with memory hacking - as in I have a known false memory.

It's not childhood trauma or alien abduction or anything so interesting. It's an incident from not long after we moved into our house on Union Drive. A couple I'd never seen before showed up saying they were my husband's aunt and uncle and some amusing conversation passed before we figured out that they were talking about an entirely different Jon, who lived on Union PLACE.

Only, it didn't happen to me. It happened to my husband. He told me about it, and for some reason, it became my story. On the one hand, I know intellectually that it didn't happen to me. On the other hand, I can SEE the people, describe their car, their clothes, their voices. I remember pointing to their printed MapQuest map and showing them where they took the wrong turn. I could describe them to a police artist and pick them out of a lineup if I had to.

The human brain is a funny thing.

That's likely an outcome of a neural mish-mash of something called "imagination inflation," where you develop a false memory of something (often incredibly detailed) that actually didn't happen to you by simply imagining that it did happen to you. That's what a lot of Loftus' research has led to.

There's also an interesting type of it called "observation inflation" (where you can develop a false memory of doing something yourself from watching someone else do it).

The brain loves to fool us.

Roxxsmom · Apr 17, 2017

Opty said:
That's likely an outcome of a neural mish-mash of something "imagination inflation," where you develop a false memory of something (often incredibly detailed) that actually didn't happen to you by simply imagining that it did happen to you. That's what a lot of Loftus' research has led to.

There's also an interesting type of it called "observation inflation" (where you can develop a false memory of doing something yourself from watching someone else do it).

The brain loves to fool us.

This certainly explains why my mom and I often have such different versions of things that happened when I was little. I suspect that neither of us are completely accurate, though my mom's brain is definitely operating under a narrative that seems to blur out the parenting practices of the times (norms and practices that are unacceptable, sometimes even illegal, today), whereas I remember her sometimes not buckling us up in the car, and her and dad going out leaving me and my brother alone and coming home later than they said they were going to sometimes. Things like that. my own mental narrative is that I was basically a well-behaved, reasonable kid.

For example, we both remember the time I fell out the the car when I was 4 1/2, but I remember very clearly that the door was locked and I wasn't buckled in to begin with (because mom shrugged it off sometimes when we weren't going far), but the door just popped open when I was leaning against it as we went around a corner. Maybe it wasn't latched all the way or something. She remembers me actually squirming out of my seat belt (there were no car seats for kids my age back then) and unlocking and possibly opening the door (something I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have done, because I remember that I was pretty obsessive about locking car doors when others forgot).

We each remember the event in a way that paints us in a better light.

I wasn't hurt, fortunately, but we may never know if she was being a bit absent minded that day, or if I was being an unusually (for me) squirmy brat that day. I really don't think I was dumb enough to open the door of a moving car on purpose, though.

Neuroscience: Rules of memory formation may be rewritten

Opty

Introversion

Pie aren't squared, pie are round!

dickson

Hairy on the inside

MRFAndover

onesecondglance

pretending to be awake

Bacchus

cmhbob

Did...did I do that?

liritha

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

Opty

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido

Myrealana

I aim to misbehave

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

Opty

Opty

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido