Mandela Effect Essay On Confabulation

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Even though parallel universes are fun to imagine, thinking that there is something out there that is unknown and a mystery, but since the only science backing it up is a theory, we chalk up the Mandela Effect to something we can explain - confabulation (SC8). Confabulation is a disturbance of memory defined as the production of fabricated or distorted memories. This is a term that is used to describe patients with memory defects caused by brain trauma or mental illnesses. David Emery states that confabulation is also used to describe an everyday phenomenon like embellishing the truth when recounting events and inventing facts to fill in gaps in memories (Emery). Although confabulation is more prone to people with brain trauma or mental illnesses, …show more content…

This is very common. Although how does it happen to people without brain trauma? Ulric Neisser explains it with memory retrieval, as a kind of paleontology: “When we recall the past, we reconstruct these pieces into coherent narratives, filling in the blank, thus changes will be made” (Poulsen). The memories that confabulation make are called false memories.

Confabulation is not the only cause of false memories otherwise known as misremembering. To start with the basis of understanding the memory, one must know that memories are stored in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. In a recent fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) study over the past decade, researchers found that the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex have decreased in activity. The memory is a constructive surface and not so much reproductive. It can be distorted by being influenced by bias, association, imagination and peer pressure. As one goes to recall an event, the brain will now associate that memory with what is happening around them at the time of the recall. This could distort memories or allow false information to be injected into the memory, creating a false memory. An example of this would be like the “Telephone Game”, as one person says it to another it may change and continue to

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