{"id":2829,"date":"2020-10-13T14:28:59","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T18:28:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www2.law.temple.edu\/aer\/?p=2829"},"modified":"2021-12-16T14:56:32","modified_gmt":"2021-12-16T14:56:32","slug":"brain-lessons-the-mechanics-of-strong-but-false-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.temple.edu\/aer\/2020\/10\/13\/brain-lessons-the-mechanics-of-strong-but-false-memories\/","title":{"rendered":"BRAIN LESSONS: THE MECHANICS OF STRONG BUT FALSE MEMORIES"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the time-bending blockbuster Inception<\/em>, Leonardo DiCaprio\u2019s character devises an elaborate method of mental manipulation: implanting an idea in another person\u2019s head so that the recipient actually believes the idea is his own.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 The reality of implanted ideas is nearly as strange as this movie.\u00a0 I would guess that lawyers are generally suspicious of witnesses\u2019 memories\u2014and rightly so\u2014but perhaps most lawyers aren\u2019t aware of just how easily memories can be manipulated.\u00a0 Could a person, for instance, be made to believe she had committed a significant crime?\u00a0 An assault?\u00a0 How about assault with a weapon?<\/p>\n

An article I read recently neatly summarizes the work of some of the noted researchers in this area of memory manipulation.[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Through interviews, these researchers have convinced regular, healthy-minded people that they had committed a criminal assault, among other crimes.[3]<\/a> None of this is likely to surprise the criminal defense lawyers in the room.\u00a0 However, I don\u2019t want them to leave now thinking we\u2019re going to rehash what should be fairly common knowledge in the bar, so we\u2019ll dive deeper.\u00a0 The theoretical brain mechanics behind this sort of manipulation is the subject of this month\u2019s blog.<\/p>\n

A false memory, as it turns out, has its own locus in the brain.\u00a0 When scientists watch a false memory light up an fMRI, they see blood flowing strongly in the frontoparietal region of the brain\u2014the area scientists associate with our sense of familiarity.\u00a0 Real memory, however, lights up the hippocampus.[4]<\/a>\u00a0 It\u2019s this strength of the familiar with the actual that makes false memories so easy to come by.\u00a0 Researchers call this close link the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm.\u00a0 The DRM paradigm is easy to explain.\u00a0 Suppose I gave you a list of words to memorize and all the words had a theme:\u00a0 bat, ball, glove, pitch, base, dugout, catcher, etc.\u00a0 The paradigm suggests that there\u2019s a good chance you\u2019ll recall, with some confidence, that the words hit or strike were on the list.[5]<\/a>\u00a0 They clearly were not. \u00a0Memories of events are also thematic.<\/p>\n

To explain the DRM paradigm, researchers have proposed a system of memory called \u201cfuzzy trace theory.\u201d\u00a0 Within \u201cfuzzy trace theory\u201d is the proposal that human beings have two kinds of memory: verbatim and gist.\u00a0 Verbatim is quick, easily recalled detail.\u00a0 I can clearly remember the name \u201cJules Epstein\u201d as matching the bright, smiling fellow who helms Temple\u2019s advocacy program and the listserv that delivered this blog post.\u00a0 Having seen him recently, I can describe, with detail, what he looks like.\u00a0 Where I get \u201cfuzzy\u201d is in the gist memory of how, precisely, we came upon the idea of this blog\u2014apart from the fact that Jules said to me something akin to, \u201cLet\u2019s write a blog!\u201d\u00a0 I have some ideas of how our conversation about this blog went and I could probably spin you a yarn on how it all transpired.\u00a0 Gist memory, says the researchers, has a \u201cmuch more powerful influence after a delay\u201d and, thus, we rely more on gist memory as we age.[6]<\/a>\u00a0 All isn\u2019t a total loss with age, however.\u00a0 We become \u201cmeaning makers\u201d and work in these familiar associations of memories.\u00a0 Though we are likely to insert words into a list that weren\u2019t there, we are, with age, more likely to remember the whole<\/em> list\u2014so our accuracy suffers, but we\u2019re at least still in the game.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

And, so, with the spark of a refreshed memory, I now remember how Jules and I came upon the idea for this blog.\u00a0 He struck up a brief conversation with me on an overseas plane flight headed to Los Angeles.\u00a0 Our flight attendant in first class had poured me a glass of water.\u00a0 Feeling rather tired after just a few sips, I dozed off and had a very long, hard sleep with vivid dreams that my father had one last wish for me\u2026<\/p>\n

\n

[1]<\/a> Inception (Warner Bros. Pictures 2010).<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Lindsay Dodgson, Our Brains Sometimes Create \u2018False Memories\u2019 \u2013 But Science Suggests We Could Be Better Off This Way, BUSINESS INSIDER INDIA (Dec. 19, 2017, 2:06 PM), https:\/\/www.businessinsider.in\/our-brains-sometimes-create-false-memories-but-science-suggests-we-could-be-better-off-this-way\/articleshow\/62132822.cms.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> E.g., <\/em>Julia Shaw & Stephen Porter, Constructing Rich False Memories of Committing Crime<\/em>, 26 Psychological Science Mar. 1, 2015, at 291.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Dodgson, supra<\/em> note 2.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Id.<\/em><\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Id.<\/em><\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Id.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the time-bending blockbuster Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio\u2019s character devises an elaborate method of mental manipulation: implanting an idea in another person\u2019s head so that the recipient actually believes the idea is his own.[1]\u00a0 The reality of implanted ideas is nearly as strange as this movie.\u00a0 I would guess that lawyers are generally suspicious of witnesses\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"coauthors":[203],"class_list":["post-2829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brain-lessons"],"yoast_head":"\nBRAIN LESSONS: THE MECHANICS OF STRONG BUT FALSE MEMORIES - Advocacy and Evidence Resources<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/law.temple.edu\/aer\/2020\/10\/13\/brain-lessons-the-mechanics-of-strong-but-false-memories\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"BRAIN LESSONS: THE MECHANICS OF STRONG BUT FALSE MEMORIES - 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