If we consider situations in which we were heavily emotionally involved, particularly traumatic, catastrophic events, like 9/11, the death of John Lennon or Lady Di, the Simpson verdict, or the Japanese tsunami, we believe our memories of those events are very accurate. Those images and sensations are seemingly burned into memory with the perceived ability to remember "exactly" where you were, what you were doing, how you felt, who you were with, etc. Our ability to remember these types of "big" events have been increasingly looked at in research studies.
The landmark investigation of these traumatic memories, "Flashbulb Memories" was published in Cognition, Vol 5, 1,1977 by Roger Brown and James Kulik of Harvard. These events, characterized by "high level of surprise, high level of consequentiality, and perhaps emotional arousal" were believed to be so important that they "would have high selection value and so could account for the evolution of an innate base for such a memory mechanism." They were presumed to be held very accurately in memory.
There has been much subsequent research into traumatic memories, like "The Death of Princess Diana: The Effects on Memory Enhancement Procedures on Flashbulb Memories" in Imagination, Cognition and Personality, Vol 25,3, 2005-2006 by Krakow, E, et.al. from SUNY Binghamton, which has shown just how selective, and inaccurate "flashbulb memories" are. Folk interviewed 3 days after the event, and then 11 to 12 wks later, even w/"memory enhancement" procedures like reinstatement and reverse order recall, showed only 82% consistency for the major features of the event, and were only consistent about 1/3 of the time for the rest of the facts around the event.
What we remember is largely controlled by how emotional we were about an event. When we look at a series of pictures, those which trigger an emotional response are much more likely to be remembered than those which don't. When we remember something, it doesn't go precisely to one location like a hard drive, but is instead sent "all over the place" in the brain. When emotions are involved, the amygdala assures that those are noticed, and the hippocampus, the hub of memory formation, encodes, stores, consolidates and dispatches pieces of the memory to various regions like the auditory, parietal and visual cortex, for sound, movement and sights, respectively, as was discussed in an earlier blog. The role of the amygdala in orchestrating the memory-boosting effects of emotion was demonstrated over the last 15 years by many neuroscientists including LeDoux, LaBar, Spencer, McGaugh.
When you recall the memory of an event, the amygdala and hippocampus regenerate the emotional and sensory contents of the memory and try to reconstruct it, almost always imperfectly. Talarico, J.M. and Rubin, D.C. in "Confidence Not Consistency Characterizes Flashbulb Memories" in Psychological Science, 14, 2003, interviewed 54 students on their memories of 9/11 on 9/12 as well as one week, six weeks or 32 weeks later with the same questions. Their memories of 9/11 were surprisingly no more accurate than their memories of simple mundane occurrences over the same period. For both traumatic and mundane situations, consistent details decreased by 1/3 in 8 months, with more inconsistencies. Surprisingly, the students were, however, much more confident in the accuracy of their traumatic 9/11 memories.
One surprise from the Talarico and Rubin study was that folk were much worse at remembering their emotional state on 9/11. One year later, only 42% described it correctly, demonstrating that how we feel about an earlier event is controlled by our current emotional state rather than by how we actually felt at the time of the event.
A larger national study on 9/11 memories by a group of scientists called the Memory Consortium demonstrated a similar result w/more than 3000 folk in 7 cities. A year later, only about 2/3 of their memories were the same as their initial memories. After three years, only about 1/2 of their memories were the same.
Emotions work "both ways", interestingly. Studies have shown that not just negative traumas, but also very happy memories are distorted in both accuracy and confidence; in some studies, the distortions were even larger for happy events than for negative ones. There is also "the weapon effect", where, with highly emotional events, the central element, like the burning towers, is remembered at the expense of the background like other buildings, folk on the street, vehicles, etc.
Why did we evolve this way with a malleable, pliable memory? The "experts" believe that we evolved a memory system that was designed to protect us from an unpredictable and at times, perilous, future. Items are changed and added to a memory as the brain constructs a more useful "model" for a future situation something like this one, for our protection. As the situations will not be identical, the brain's cutting and pasting other similar information or situation to the original memory is probably evolutionarily advantaged.
These facts about our memory, a) whatever we become emotional about, either negative or positive, will be recorded, b) our memory degrades significantly over time - after 1 year, it is no better that 2/3 "correct", c) for very emotional events, we will probably retain only the central element with any accuracy, d) we will believe our memories of very emotional events are very accurate but they are no more accurate than non-emotional event memories - can be helpful for our emotional well-being and "spiritual" practices.
Understanding these scientifically-proven facts, we can more easily do the surrender exercises on stories we carry around. With the Sedona method, or Byron Katie's "the work", questions like "Is this true?", "Can I be certain that it is true?", "Could I let go of this?", "Would I let go of it?", "Is the completely opposite story just as likely to be true?", take on new meaning, clarity and depth. After 3 years, if we only have 1/2 of the same memory of an event, why do we cling to our stories about it, or the energy we hold around it, perhaps the guilt, anger, resentment, etc.? The energy we feel about an event now is different from what it felt like at the time.
Just let go of those old stories, they are, with a high degree of scientific certainty, incorrect.
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