Frustratingly, a lot of what we think are memories are in fact: us remembering remembering.
Human memory is increasingly fallible with time because of this.
It's like playing chinese whispers with our own recollection, everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.
It makes sense that you would remember distinct events, but the trouble here is that nearly all memory as you so eloquently described, is "just confabulations"- which feels wrong instinctively, until it's challenged scientifically.
I have some pretty intense trauma in my life that I can recall extremely vividly even though i have little memory of the weeks surrounding the event. Often when I don't even want to. Certain memories are true memories.
Some fact or visual memory is as that, but our memories are also made up of sensory sensations and emotional states, and combinations abound. In fact, a big part of what makes PTSD is a split off different aspects of a remembered event because it’s so difficult to process the whole experience. This takes place after a traumatic event, during attempts at memory consolidation.
Also traumatic memory seems to be stored differently than day to day memory, which helps explain that triggers and flashbacks are valid and real (for traumatized ppl), while the confabulation effect can also exist. Though I’d note that confabulation can happen but that doesn’t mean it “overwrites” the old memory, or that confabulation is in any way more common than just remembering a part or a whole event.
Human memory is increasingly fallible with time because of this.
It's like playing chinese whispers with our own recollection, everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.
It makes sense that you would remember distinct events, but the trouble here is that nearly all memory as you so eloquently described, is "just confabulations"- which feels wrong instinctively, until it's challenged scientifically.