How Memory Lies

[YouTube - Link]

This American Life, the well known show on NPR, had its television debut a couple years ago. This animation is from their second season and reveals an extreme example of how memories can shape themselves through something called the "misinformation effect."

In truth, memories are reconstructed each time we recall them which can lead to one telling a small lie in a memory and eventually believing that lie to be true further down the road.

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/03/misinformation-effect/ via Doobybrain

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I was reading the other day - in 'Time Paradox' by Philip Zimbardo (previously mentioned on Neatorama - thanks alot! :D ), that we misremember between 10 and 25% of memories. In some cases people imagine traumatic experiences that never happened, or forget the most traumatic experiences - which means our own sense of reality is mixture of imagination and forgetfulness! Hence, my developing theory disjunctioned reality.

p.s. Talking about spotting a celebrity - I thought I saw Justin Bieber on chatroulette the other day! Now I am not so sure, and I may have misremembered it! He didn't seem keen chatting, musn't be his sort of person.

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Kind of brings into question the validity of eyewitnesses in court cases, doesn't it?

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Sounds like a bit from Radio Lab.

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This can probably be compared to the term "flashbulb memories".
The very vivid, traumatic memories are usually the most fabricated over the years. Was a study done on people remembering their experience of 9/11, they wrote it down, and then were asked a few years later and told it very differently. Tis inteeeresting.