Neuroscience, Memory and Social Manipulation
Brain Science Reveals How a Fallible Memory Shapes Our Lives
Sep 21, 2008
Don’t be so sure you really remember what you think you remember. Neuroscience has begun to amass startling data about human memory thanks to new neuroimaging and scanning technology and a host of innovative scientists. Distinguished memory researcher and Harvard Professor Daniel L. Schacter began to link cognitive psychology, clinical observations and neuroscience into a cohesive approach to understanding memory in his 1996 book Searching for Memory from BasicBooks, in an effort to paint “the big picture of memory.” He writes: “We now know enough about how memories are stored and retrieved to demolish another long-standing myth: that memories are passive or literal recordings of reality…we do not store judgment-free snapshots of our past experiences but rather hold on to the meaning, sense, and emotions these experiences provided us.”
Fallible Memory a Key Element of Human Perception
Schacter’s research has brought him to the realization that memories are complicated mental structures built from multiple contributors, and that even though memory is generally a reliable asset, it can sometimes deceive us badly. He finds the fact that memory can be difficult to access in some situations and dead wrong in others, yet it still forms the basis for our awareness and beliefs a curious aspect of human existence. He refers to this duality of a fallible memory system that contributes so much to our perception of ourselves and the world as “memory’s fragile power.”
Brain Research and the Cognitive Unconscious
Schacter and other scientists have begun to explore in more depth how the limitations of memory coupled with the overwhelming influence it undoubtedly has on our lives cause the past to shape our present. Dr. Richard Restak, acclaimed neurologist and neuropsychiatrist chronicles in over 15 best-selling books how the brain’s multi-dimensional system for encoding memories—even memories that were filed away without our conscious awareness—can affect our future actions in a much greater way than ever imagined.
Restak points out that there is a growing understanding that our cognitive unconscious—thinking and doing without conscious effort or awareness—is much more active in our lives than in the simple, repetitive actions we learn and find ourselves mindlessly performing like riding a bike or brushing our teeth. Restak and others contend that most of our decisions are made without conscious thought. He points out that brain research has led to a counterintuitive understanding of how the brain uses memory to make decisions: “Our actions originate outside of our awareness; consciousness plays little part in determining how we respond to many aspects of the world around us. This is a heady and sobering thought: We don’t so much make decisions as our brain makes them for us.”
Neurosociety and Resisting Social Manipulation
This new insight into the malleability of normal human memory has had an impact in many fields other than neuroscience and psychology, thus projecting Schacter’s “big picture” onto a wide-screen. Restak discusses the impact of brain research on society as a whole in his 2006 book The Naked Brain from Harmony Publishing, coining the word “neurosociety” to describe how advertisers, politicians, economists, the legal system and others are using the latest data to evaluate our behavior and influence our habits.
Should we be concerned that what we remember can be unreliable or manipulated to influence us at an unconscious level? Restak calls for healthy skepticism whenever confronted with something we think or are told is without a doubt “the way it happened” and an increased awareness that by learning what we can about the emerging social applications of brain science we can resist being manipulated by irresponsible marketing, political spin or media and instead use the information to further our personal and collective freedoms.
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