Research by Elizabeth Loftus and others demonstrates that it is alarmingly easy to
implant false memories.
Since the 1970s, for instance, Loftus has been able to
implant false memories in individuals in lab studies — that they were lost in a mall as children or that they hugged Bugs Bunny at Disneyland (where there is no Bugs Bunny, because he's not a Disney character).
In support of this view, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, then of the University of Washington, proved how easy it is to
implant a false memory, especially one that is plausible.
You control two doctors who are exploring a dying man's memories to
implant a false memory so he can die in peace.
Not exact matches
But most important, it is likely that
false memories can be
implanted only in people who are unaware of the mental manipulation.
The good news is that we are not on the verge of what the Boston Globe has called a «Matrix - like cyberpunk dystopia» in which we all become robohumans, controlled by
implants that «impose
false memories» and «scan for wayward thoughts.»
Using a stunning set of molecular neuroscience techniques (no electrode caps involved), these scientists have captured specific
memories in mice, altered them, and shown that the mice behave in accord with these new,
false,
implanted memories.
The good news is that we are not on the verge of what The Boston Globe has called a «Matrix - like cyberpunk dystopia» in which we all become robohumans, controlled by
implants that «impose
false memories» and «scan for wayward thoughts.»
Around 30 years ago, work by psychologists and neuroscientists began to show that our
memories are easily suggestible, with the implication that leading questioning could
implant false details, or even completely fictitious events, in the minds of eyewitnesses.
Last year, Tonegawa and his team published a study in Nature showing how
false memories could be
implanted in mice.
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed the ability to
implant mice with
false memories.
Imagine that what we take to be our entire existence and lives - everything we know - are actually
false memories implanted into us, with a few fabricated artefacts such as faded old photos to serve as reinforcements of our perceptions.
A 2013 research paper showed that a
false memory in the brain looks much like a real
memory and that at least from experiments conducted on mice it is possible to
implant these
memories in others.
A 1997 Scientific American article by the psychologist Elizabeth F. Loftus argued that
false memories can be relatively easily
implanted into the psyches of human beings.