Memory Lane

"Making Memories describes the science of how memories are constructed and reconstructed, revealing how this process of making (and remaking) memories - which has strengths, but also introduces vulnerabilities - is central to the formation of our identities. Rather than retrieving memories fully formed from long-term storage, memories are reconstructed every time we attempt to recall them. The way in which memories are reconstructed can lead to errors and distortions and even to entirely false memories. The authors describe the consequences of these memory errors, including faulty eyewitness identifications and susceptibility to misinformation. Greene and Murphy also discuss the effects of memory distortion in our lives, both negative and positive. The downsides of memory distortions are considerable; however, the authors make the point that they arise not as some anomaly or failure of evolution but rather as a by-product of a "perfectly imperfect" process that evolved to solve problems in our ancestral environment. These "flaws" are perhaps better thought of as "features," as they help to make us who we are and enable us to go about our lives and make sense of our experiences. The problems arise when we have unrealistic expectations of our memories - for example, if we expect them to record our experiences like a video camera, perfectly preserving the past, which they do not"--