Q. i have heard that they are actually changing some of the laws based on recent work on DNA, cognitive neuroscience and psychological studies. Can you talk about this?
G. As covered in earlier posts, "Traumatic memories feel true but are always changing", "why we may never know what happened in the Sandusky/Penn State tragedy", "short term memory distorts what we see", and "The Influence of Misinformation", our memories are far from "perfect", even for traumatic, historic, and emotional events.
Whether it is 9/11, the death of Lady Di, or a more mundane event, the way the brain encodes, stores memories, and then recalls them is likely to result in memories that are incorrect.
Several studies demonstrated that 9/11 memories were surprisingly no more accurate than memories of everyday situations. For both traumatic and mundane situations, "consistent details" decreased by 1/3 in 8 months, although folk were more confident in 9/11 memories. One year later, only 42% could describe their 9/11 emotional state accurately. After three years, only 1/2 of their memories of 9/11 were the same. Just how/why does our brain do such a bad job on memories?
Let's look at "memory". There are three types of memory based on duration; sensory (seconds), short term/working (seconds to a minute), and long term.
There are two types of long term memory. One is declarative, or explicit memory, which is what we can consciously recall, and has two types; a) semantic, which stores factual information, and b) episodic, which stores personal, autobiographical experiences. The other type of long term memory is procedural which is used for the performance of specific types of actions below the level of conscious awareness. Our major focus here is long term, episodic memory, which is where our "problems" arise.
Later it is recalled/recollected from those different regions. There are many opportunities for other information to be inserted, deleted, or just forgotten as this process is repeated for a given memory.
A 2011 study by "Ecker, U. K. H., et al., "Correcting false information in memory: Manipulating the strength of misinformation encoding and its retraction" in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review demonstrated how recalling such long-term episodic information can be manipulated by looking at misinformation, or the difficulty of folk ignoring what they first heard, even if told that it is wrong and should be ignored.
As Ecker summarized, "even if you understand, remember and believe the retractions, this misinformation will still affect your inferences.” Our memory is constantly connecting new facts to old and tying different aspects of a situation together, so that we may still unconsciously draw on facts we know to be wrong, to make decisions later. “Memory has evolved to be both stable and flexible,” Ecker says, “but that also has a downside.”
The storage process is based on the Hebbian theory of “neurons/brain cells that fire together, wire together.” This can lead to forming networks of connections. When these networks refire later, we experience "memory".
The manner in which "lineups" are done has also been found to influence outcomes. The traditional "simultaneous" lineup has been found in a 2001 study w/real cases to select the wrong person about 1/4 of the time. Sequential, or "one-at-a-time" lineups, photographic as well as in-person, are now mandated in New Jersey and North Carolina.
Even confessions are increasingly regarded with some skepticism; false confessions are not rare. The Innocence Project found that 1/4 of individuals found guilty but later cleared by DNA evidence, had confessed. There are many potential causes, including the use of highly coercive interrogations.
The most widely used interrogation technique, Reid, is charged w/generating "spurious" confessions. Russano, et al, in 2005 in "Investigating True and False Confessions within a Novel Experimental Paradigm" used approaches similar to the Reid technique. This doubled the odds of a genuine confession, but increased the chances of false confessions by 700%. A new interrogation protocol, called PEACE has been developed, but Reid is still widely used.
What does all of this have to do w/our nondual awakening practices? Well, those troublesome, highly-charged, long-term episodic memories/stories that manifest in your meditations, which you now recognize as highly suspect, and almost certainly incorrect in some regards, should be subjected to the Byron Katie approach, of "Is this true?", "Can i know for certain that it's true?", and "Is it just as likely that the opposite is true?". Then just "let go, let go..." of them.
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| Ullrich Ecker Univ. of W. Australia |
G. As covered in earlier posts, "Traumatic memories feel true but are always changing", "why we may never know what happened in the Sandusky/Penn State tragedy", "short term memory distorts what we see", and "The Influence of Misinformation", our memories are far from "perfect", even for traumatic, historic, and emotional events.
Whether it is 9/11, the death of Lady Di, or a more mundane event, the way the brain encodes, stores memories, and then recalls them is likely to result in memories that are incorrect.
Several studies demonstrated that 9/11 memories were surprisingly no more accurate than memories of everyday situations. For both traumatic and mundane situations, "consistent details" decreased by 1/3 in 8 months, although folk were more confident in 9/11 memories. One year later, only 42% could describe their 9/11 emotional state accurately. After three years, only 1/2 of their memories of 9/11 were the same. Just how/why does our brain do such a bad job on memories?Let's look at "memory". There are three types of memory based on duration; sensory (seconds), short term/working (seconds to a minute), and long term.
There are two types of long term memory. One is declarative, or explicit memory, which is what we can consciously recall, and has two types; a) semantic, which stores factual information, and b) episodic, which stores personal, autobiographical experiences. The other type of long term memory is procedural which is used for the performance of specific types of actions below the level of conscious awareness. Our major focus here is long term, episodic memory, which is where our "problems" arise.
 |
| Memory Areas of Brain (Scientific American) |
When episodic, emotional situations occur, 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.
Later it is recalled/recollected from those different regions. There are many opportunities for other information to be inserted, deleted, or just forgotten as this process is repeated for a given memory.
A 2011 study by "Ecker, U. K. H., et al., "Correcting false information in memory: Manipulating the strength of misinformation encoding and its retraction" in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review demonstrated how recalling such long-term episodic information can be manipulated by looking at misinformation, or the difficulty of folk ignoring what they first heard, even if told that it is wrong and should be ignored.
As Ecker summarized, "even if you understand, remember and believe the retractions, this misinformation will still affect your inferences.” Our memory is constantly connecting new facts to old and tying different aspects of a situation together, so that we may still unconsciously draw on facts we know to be wrong, to make decisions later. “Memory has evolved to be both stable and flexible,” Ecker says, “but that also has a downside.”
The storage process is based on the Hebbian theory of “neurons/brain cells that fire together, wire together.” This can lead to forming networks of connections. When these networks refire later, we experience "memory".
 |
| Jason Chan Iowa State |
When new “related” inputs arrive, they can connect to the network, sometimes modifying a memory and creating “false memories”. There
is no “time/date stamp” on the information; associated/related memory rules. It was more important for our ancestors to have a consolidated "memory" of all dangerous episodes at the watering hole than it was to remember exactly, when/what each was.
Work at Iowa State by Jason Chan, "The dark side of testing memory; Repeated Retrieval Can Enhance Eyewitness Suggestibility", in December 2011, discussed the generation of "false memories". When an eyewitness is asked to make a police statement about a crime, memory can be clouded by misinformation— introduced unknowingly by law enforcement, or through erroneous online or news reports, or knowingly by clever attorneys. When the witness provides testimony in court, in what researchers call “retrieval-enhanced suggestibility,” there are mistakes.
As Chan points out “…people can confuse their memories...if you saw a bank robbery and later saw a movie depicting bank robberies, whatever you remember from that movie—can interfere with your ability to recall the real-life case.”
i personally experienced this "false memory" in an fMRI memory study. After viewing many different articles one day and then returning the next day to remember them, i found that some new ones were confused as being from the day before, i.e. "false memories" were formed as the brain stuck new parts on old articles, erroneously.
Work at Iowa State by Jason Chan, "The dark side of testing memory; Repeated Retrieval Can Enhance Eyewitness Suggestibility", in December 2011, discussed the generation of "false memories". When an eyewitness is asked to make a police statement about a crime, memory can be clouded by misinformation— introduced unknowingly by law enforcement, or through erroneous online or news reports, or knowingly by clever attorneys. When the witness provides testimony in court, in what researchers call “retrieval-enhanced suggestibility,” there are mistakes.
As Chan points out “…people can confuse their memories...if you saw a bank robbery and later saw a movie depicting bank robberies, whatever you remember from that movie—can interfere with your ability to recall the real-life case.”
i personally experienced this "false memory" in an fMRI memory study. After viewing many different articles one day and then returning the next day to remember them, i found that some new ones were confused as being from the day before, i.e. "false memories" were formed as the brain stuck new parts on old articles, erroneously.
These learnings are beginning to change the legal system. Work by Gilbert, et al. in 1990 in "Unbelieving the Unbelievable; Some Problems in the Rejection of False Information" demonstrated that interrupting statements prevented "analytical" processing, and permitted only "rapid...intuitive" responses which, by default, are Darwinianly-evolved to be believed as true.
In trials, being told by the judge to disregard a statement/evidence is often ineffective, due to this "belief persistence". Studies have shown that even the judge's reading the charges to the jury, biases the jurors to believe the charges.
"Eyewitness" testimony is increasingly being overturned by DNA evidence. The Innocence Project has freed 300 folk on DNA evidence, 18 from death row. In 3/4 of these, there was faulty eyewitness testimony; in 1/3 of those, there were two or more observers. In response to these issues and work like Ecker's and Chan's, the New Jersey Supreme Court in July, followed by the Connecticut Supreme Court in September, instructed judges to make jurors explicitly aware of these facts.
 |
| Simultaneous Lineup |
The manner in which "lineups" are done has also been found to influence outcomes. The traditional "simultaneous" lineup has been found in a 2001 study w/real cases to select the wrong person about 1/4 of the time. Sequential, or "one-at-a-time" lineups, photographic as well as in-person, are now mandated in New Jersey and North Carolina.
Even confessions are increasingly regarded with some skepticism; false confessions are not rare. The Innocence Project found that 1/4 of individuals found guilty but later cleared by DNA evidence, had confessed. There are many potential causes, including the use of highly coercive interrogations.
The most widely used interrogation technique, Reid, is charged w/generating "spurious" confessions. Russano, et al, in 2005 in "Investigating True and False Confessions within a Novel Experimental Paradigm" used approaches similar to the Reid technique. This doubled the odds of a genuine confession, but increased the chances of false confessions by 700%. A new interrogation protocol, called PEACE has been developed, but Reid is still widely used.
What does all of this have to do w/our nondual awakening practices? Well, those troublesome, highly-charged, long-term episodic memories/stories that manifest in your meditations, which you now recognize as highly suspect, and almost certainly incorrect in some regards, should be subjected to the Byron Katie approach, of "Is this true?", "Can i know for certain that it's true?", and "Is it just as likely that the opposite is true?". Then just "let go, let go..." of them.
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