What kind of information do you retain in memory and what is lost over time? These are questions that have produced many hypotheses over the years and now, a team of researchers from the universities of Glasgow (Scotland) and Birmingham (England) offers some answers. His work shows that our memories become less vibrant and detailed over time, and only the essence of them, the basal element, is preserved. Furthermore, the more we bring a memory to mind, the more it changes.
While memories are not exact copies of the past (remembering is understood to be a highly reconstructive process), experts have suggested that the content of a memory can change each time we bring it to mind, although so far it has been difficult to measure. exactly how our memories differ from original experiences and how they transform over time in laboratory settings. For the new study, the researchers developed a simple computing task that measures how quickly people can recall certain characteristics from visual memories when asked to do so.
Essential memory
In the experiment, participants learned pairs of words and pictures and were then asked to recall different elements of the picture when the word in question was exposed to them. For example, they were asked to expose, as quickly as possible, whether the image was colored or grayscale, a perceptual detail, or whether it showed an animate or inanimate object.
Thus, probing the quality of visual memories (with tests carried out immediately after learning and then two days later), they showed that participants recalled significant semantic elements more quickly than superficial perceptual details. They observed that the bias towards semantic memory content became significantly stronger over time and with repeated recall.
“Many theories of memory assume that over time, and as people retell their stories, they tend to forget the superficial details, but retain the significant semantic content of an event,” explains Julia Lifano, leader of the work that publishes the journal Nature Communications.
It would be a kind of economization of storage resources of the brain ; a way of privileging the substantial and eliminating the most superficial, mutating each memory over time.
This conclusion could have important implications for a wide range of relevant events, such as requests to request that eyewitnesses testify again and again in court, the nature of memories in PTSD, or even in the face of how to prepare for exams in the educational area. Especially in the case of memories related to health and illness, as with post-traumatic stress disorder , where patients often suffer intrusive and traumatic memories, tending to overgeneralize these experiences with new situations for them.
Referencia: Lifanov, J., Linde-Domingo, J. & Wimber, M. Feature-specific reaction times reveal a semanticisation of memories over time and with repeated remembering. Nat Commun 12, 3177 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23288-5
