false memories easily implanted

this is my first thread, bare with me.

LIKE A CONCEPT FROM the movie Inception, Australian scientists have found that memories can be altered by suggestion from other people. A University of Sydney study has shown that memories of an event can be amended or added to if people discuss their recollections with another witness. The findings have implications for the way police conduct interviews. "People sometimes find it difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between genuine memories and false memories of an event," says lead researcher and forensic psychologist Helen Paterson.
Read more: www.australiangeographic.com.au...

the title basically says it all, false memories are easily implanted. i cant speak for anyone else but i find it hard to believe that would work on me. maybe with small details..say a rabbit running across the road right after a car crash. i could understand that, all my attention would be focused on the car crash. if it was a rabbit, thats something that wouldnt even catch my eye. if a bear or bigfoot ran across the road, thats something i would notice haha


faculty.washington.edu...

The idea of doctors having the power to wipe the memory clean sends shivers down many people's spines. False memories could safely be erased, perhaps, assuming there was a reliable way of differentiating them from true ones. Although brain-imaging techniques highlight some differences in patterns of brain activation when a person recalls a true as opposed to a false memory, these are statistical differences only. "We are so far away from being able to use these techniques to reliably classify a single memory as being real or not real," says Loftus, "Yet that is what the courts have to do."

www.guardian.co.uk...


what are all your thoughts on this kind of thing?

The mind is an extremely powerful deception machine. In the act of trying to remember something, you are reliving the moment in your mind, and your mind is reinterpreting what happened, essentially rewriting the event in the memory. It is not far-fetched to imagine that memories can be implanted easily in anyone. It takes a great deal of hard work and dedication to be able to have flawless memory, and many may agree that it is impossible to have a perfect memory.

I think we are all susceptible to it and that the more time passes from the implantation of a false memory (even from yourself), the more the memory seems real.

As with the power of suggestion, after seeing the car crash, what if ten other witnesses told you they saw the car hit a different colored vehicle of a different type, or a mailbox or something? And then showed you evidence to prove it, like a picture or letters scattered on the ground. Would you not amend your memory of the event?

I did a thread with this subject not too long ago.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

It definetly is weird though!

reply to post by Varemia


if i saw the evidence, then yeah. i would still scratch my head at it though. especially in the case of being shown pictures. if the cars involved in the crash were red and silver yet i remembered them being black and green, i would just assume i saw colors differently hah