Our minds don't capture and record reality, but rather blend experience with fantasy—a process that often results in convincing, yet completely false, memories.<br /><br />Question: How do we produce false <br />memories? <br /> <br />Ottavio <br />Arancio: It happens in most <br />likely you were storing things in the brain and you are confusing from <br />maybe <br />your fantasy with the reality and... or, one possibility. The <br /> other possibility, like you had the <br />wrong perception of what you saw, so you're storing this in a way <br />because you <br />are convinced that it's that way, but it was not that way. <br /> Let's say I make two good <br />examples. I mean you're convinced <br />that maybe you were not... did not <br />pay that much attention and you're convinced that person was dressed in <br />red <br />instead it was pink or a color close to red then you store the thing <br />that <br />way. Obviously with time the <br />memory will become more faraway, certain aspects could disappear and we <br />could <br />fill them with other aspects just to fill the gap, so we make up for the <br /> memory <br />and we build up the memory in the time of recalling the memory we are <br />recalling <br />stuff that occurred in other circumstances because when it's a memory <br />it's not... <br />Our brain is not a recorder like passive recorder. It's more active <br />processes, <br />so being an active process there could be ways of you know changing it <br />because <br />actively we can change it. That's <br />something which is important. It's <br />not our brain is like a tape recorder or a TV or a VCR. I <br /> mean it's not. It's more active than that and <br />there <br />are several steps in the process of memory and recalling a memory which <br />there <br />are many, many steps, several steps and each one of them as a memory <br />could be <br />labile and could be you know changed into something else, substituted by <br />something else. <br /> <br />Question: Can you explain this process? <br /> <br />Ottavio <br />Arancio: Yeah. You <br />have to look at memory as a process <br />in which there are several steps which they apply some interference <br />from. It's not the right word, processing of <br />our brain of this information and this is just purely active and it's <br />just <br />changed. It's like when you change <br />something from analogue to digital just to make one of those things, the <br /> video <br />from the computer and in the process of changing from analogue to <br />digital you <br />can change something and it would not be the same you know. What if you change a chip or something <br />and you change the yellow into a green, so whatever was yellow will be <br />green <br />and... or A, when I say an A you can even artificially change into a B if <br />want <br />because if you tell the computer to change all the A into a B then <br />everything <br />will be a B or sometimes during this process some A will change into a B <br /> then <br />it will change. There is some <br />activity, something that is there occurring and it changes.
