During a recent study of memory recall and the use of suggestive interviewing, UC Irvine cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus successfully planted false memories in volunteers of several study groups -- memories that included such unlikely events as kissing frogs, shaking hands with Bugs Bunny at Disneyland, and witnessing a demonic possession.

Loftus conducted her study by having volunteers conduct a set of actions that mixed the common place with the unusual and even bizarre. Later, her research team asked volunteers to imagine additional actions they performed that day, such as kissing a frog. At a future time, participants were asked to recall their actions on that specific day; 15 percent of the study's volunteers claimed they had actually performed some of the actions they had only imagined. In another study, Loftus showed how false memories can be planted with a visual. Loftus and her colleagues exposed volunteers to a fake print advertisement describing a visit to Disneyland where they would meet Bugs Bunny. Later, 33 percent of these volunteers claimed they knew or remembered the event happening to them (Bugs Bunny is a Warner Bros. character and has never appeared at Disneyland.) The false memory rate was boosted when people were given multiple exposures to the fake advertisement. In one study, 36 percent of those given three exposures said they met Bugs Bunny, compared to only 9 percent in a control condition.

These studies continue three decades of research by Loftus proving that memory is highly susceptible to distortion and contamination. >from *Kissing Frogs To Demonic Possession, People Are Led To Believe They Experienced The Improbable*, february 17, 2003

related context
> mirroring evil: nazi imagery/recent art. march 18, 2002
> eyes and ears understand differently. august 16, 2001
> a paradigm shift in neuroscience: memory loss in old age no longer linked to dying brain cells. november 25, 1998
> memory. wikipedia
> a guide through the labyrinth of memory. exhibition at the exploratorium

imago
> kiss frogs

I knew about this from my psychology lectures. But I still can't convince my husband that he has assimilated a story he heard into a real memory. There's no way he was there to see for himself but he now swears he was.

Could this be part of our learning mechanism, whereby experiences that we assimilate from others are as important as experiences that we go through for ourselves, and are therefore are prone to becoming 'real' memories?

Very good question. A possible answer -as part of our learning mechanism, like you pointed -: "Scientists may have found a biological reason to explain why two people who witness the same event will, years later, often have different memories of what happened. It seems that every time an old memory is pulled into consciousness, the brain takes it apart, updates it and then makes new proteins in the process of putting the memory back into long-term storage. The fact that new proteins are made means that the memory has been transformed permanently to reflect each person's life experiences, not the memory itself... Why evolution would choose a strategy that permits memories to be highly malleable is an interesting question. Memories need to be reliable to guide behavior, but they also need to be open to new information." From "Brain-updating machinery may explain false memories." New York Times, September 19, 2000
By Sandra Blakeslee
http://www.rickross.com/reference/false_memories/fsm35.html

Ooh, that reminds me of something I wrote:
"Some moments, memories, smells, sights and feelings burn themselves so heavily in your brain that they create hardwiring of brain-cells. The physiology of your brain changes to incorporate the memory, or more importantly, your version of it. Connections are made so that the trains of thought are as familiar and inevitable as the shortcut across the grass on your way home."

What I only noticed recently, after going over the memories I wrote about after this passage, was that some of them have changed already. This is despite me writing them down. So much for familiar and inevitable! :)

Thanks for Context by the way... you are encouraging me to delve further into topics than I would usually. I love the design (although the stripes on the right on the front page play havoc with my LCD monitor), especially the illustrations and the 'magazine' feel.

How brain gives special resonance to emotional memories. If the emotional memory of a traumatic car accident or the thrill of first love are remembered with a special resonance, it is because they engage different brain structures than do normal memories, Duke University researchers have discovered.

Their new study provides clear evidence from humans that the brain's emotional center, called the amygdala, interacts with memory-related brain regions during the formation of emotional memories, perhaps to give such memories their indelible emotional resonance.

"Other studies have focused on the general enhancing effects of emotion on memory, and the evidence for the modulation hypothesis was disparate and inconclusive. Thus, this is the first direct evidence for the modulation hypothesis in humans."

From "How brain gives special resonance to emotional memories." june 9, 2004
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/du-hbg060204.php