According to a new study conducted by Northwestern University cognitive neuroscientist Donna J. Bridge, memories can altered by new experiences and may not be accurate for use in courtroom testimony, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The study was published Tuesday in the Journal of Neuroscience and says the area of the brain behind our eyeballs can both verify and distort reality, depending on relevant experience, the Times reported. The study also stated the area behind our eyes is active during both activities.
Bridge, a postdoctoral student at the university's Feinberg School of Medicine, tested the memory of 17 subjects by giving them a "deceptively simple task" to measure if their memory was "consolidated or altered," the Times reported.
Subjects were given locations of dozens of objects to study on a computer screen and were then asked to remember where the object was originally shown, but with a different background, according to the Times. Out of the 17 subjects, 16 did not remember the correct location by about 3 inches.
Even when subjects were given three different options as choices in order to remember the correct original location of the objects, the majority also chose the wrong location, according to the Times.
During the tests, the subject's brain activity showed the same spot on the brain behind our eyes was extremely active, the Times reported. It was maintaining the "correct" memory and confirming a new "false" memory at the same time.
"That overlapping brain activity was pretty shocking to us," Bridge said, according to the Times. "The idea is that whatever is most important to you right now, the hippocampus is responsible to either maintain a stable representation or change it."
"It seems like a basic function of memory is that it is built to change," Bridge said, according to the Times. "It's built to adapt to what is currently important to us."
Bridge added the study answers the modern questions of why we find it hard to remember how someone familiar looked in the past and why we think they look "different" when we see a familiar face in an old photograph, according to the Times.
"I think that we just don't notice we do this all the time," Bridge said, the Times reported."It's a subtle practice. We think it's adaptive. As you encounter new situations, new environments, it's good to use your past to inform the future and present; sometimes that means updating your past."
