Stolen Memories Investigated

Special to World Science

Memories may be the lifeblood of our identity. To some extent, you are what you remember.

But what if some of your memories aren’t really yours?

Brain structures thought to be important in memory formation. The hippocampus is thought to be central for initial storage of long-term memories. It also receives strong inputs of information from the medial septum and frontal lobes, which are responsible for many advanced cognitive functions including planning and decisionmaking.

Some researchers have also proposed memories may be a form of "mental time travel" in which the brain returns to a state similar to the one it was in during the recalled event.

That might just be the case, says a group of psychologists from Duke University in Durham, N.C., and the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.

In a new study, they seek to understand why some people seem to take over other people’s memories.

In past research, the team found that people, especially twins but others as well, sometimes spar over who owns a memory—and both can’t be right.

Thus, “some of the memories in which we play a leading role might in fact have been the experiences of others,” they wrote in the new study, published in the February issue of the research journal Genes, Brain and Behavior.

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