WEBVTT - Ep99 "Why do brains sometimes make things up?" 0:00:05.040 --> 0:00:08.640 Why do you brains sometimes make things up entirely? What 0:00:08.720 --> 0:00:11.680 does this have to do with Supreme Court Justice William 0:00:11.760 --> 0:00:15.240 Douglas sitting in a wheelchair and claiming that he was 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:19.840 just kicking football field goals or a blind person who 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:23.520 insists she can see, And what does any of this 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:26.840 have to do with whether Nelson Mandela did or did 0:00:26.880 --> 0:00:30.000 not die in the nineteen eighties, And whether the cartoon 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:34.839 character Curious George had a tale or the exact lines 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:39.239 said in Star Wars or Casablanca, or the spelling of 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:44.199 Oscar Meyer Wieners or the Berenstein Bears, or the narrative 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:51.800 that we tell ourselves about our lives. Welcome to Intercosmos 0:00:51.840 --> 0:00:54.560 with me, David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and an author 0:00:54.600 --> 0:00:58.320 at Stanford, and in these episodes we sail deeply into 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:02.200 our three pound universe to understand why and how our 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:17.520 lives look the way they do. Today's episode is about confabulation. 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:22.080 That's when the brain makes something up entirely. But it's 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:27.880 different than lying. Lying is purposeful deception. You know the truth, 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:31.000 but you squelch it and make up something in its place. 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:35.280 We all know what lying is, but Confabulation is a 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:39.080 different beast. It's where your brain cooks up something that 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:43.600 is not true, but you believe it entirely. How does 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:47.760 confabulation happen? How frequently does it happen? Is it seen 0:01:48.400 --> 0:01:51.880 not just in patience with brain damage? But do we 0:01:51.960 --> 0:01:54.520 all do this to some degree? And what does this 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:58.680 tell us about memory and truth telling and the interpretation 0:01:58.800 --> 0:02:04.120 of your life as a story that sometimes changes retrospectively. 0:02:06.560 --> 0:02:10.359 So to set the table, picture this Alexander, a fifty 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:13.840 eight year old man, sits comfortably in a hospital room, 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:18.760 chatting with a neurologist. Alexander describes his morning in detail, 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:21.760 the breakfast he had, the news that he read, the 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:25.040 friend that he bumped into on his way here. His 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:29.400 voice is confident, the details are specific. But there's a problem. 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:33.560 None of it happened. This man, who's a former school teacher. 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:37.800 He suffered brain damage years ago. His memory is profoundly impaired. 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:41.200 He can't form new memories. Every day is a blank slate, 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:44.640 but he doesn't seem aware of this. Instead, his brain 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:50.560 fills in the gaps, fabricating a seamless believable reality. And 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:53.040 he's not lying, not in the way we usually think 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:57.760 about lying. He fully believes the story he's telling. Why 0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:00.400 when the brain is faced with missing in from does 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:03.400 it sometimes just make things up? So let's zoom in 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:05.720 on the issue at the center of all this, which 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:09.480 is our memory systems. We tend to think of memory 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:15.119 as a recording device, something that stores our experiences faithfully 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:17.360 and plays them back on demand. 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:19.079 But over the past. 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:22.520 Century, psychology and neuroscience tell us something very different. 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:25.160 Memory isn't like a video camera. 0:03:25.800 --> 0:03:30.639 It's more like a patchwork quilt stitched together from fragments 0:03:30.639 --> 0:03:35.760 of past experience and guesses and expectations. Most of the 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:41.440 time this work's just fine. But when memory fails, maybe 0:03:41.480 --> 0:03:45.560 because of injury or aging, the brain doesn't always leave 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:49.440 a void. Sometimes it fills in the blanks, often with 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:53.200 details that are completely false. And that's what confabulation is. 0:03:53.840 --> 0:03:57.400 Some forms of it are dramatic, as in cases of 0:03:57.440 --> 0:04:00.720 brain injury, which I'll tell you more about, But milder 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:04.640 versions happen to all of us, like when we misremember 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:09.360 childhood events, when we confidently recall things that never happened, 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:14.600 when we rewrite history without realizing it. So in today's episode, 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:17.720 we're going to dive deep into the world of confabulation. 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:23.000 We'll explore cases where brain injury leads to striking, almost 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:29.080 cinematic fabrications, patients who invent entire days and blind people 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:33.520 who insist they can see and split brain patients whose 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:37.760 minds generate explanations out of thin air. And next we'll 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:41.240 turn the lens on ourselves. How often do we confabulate 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:42.360 without realizing it? 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:45.280 How reliable are our own memories? 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:47.760 And what does this all tell us about the nature 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:54.440 of reality and history and our sense of self? Okay, 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:58.200 so confabulation is most obvious and most striking in people 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:03.159 who have injuries to their brains. The fabrications the stories 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:07.280 they make up can be detailed and totally convincing, and 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:10.280 they fully believe the stories they tell. Their brains are 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:15.320 damaged in ways that impair memory retrieval, but their brains 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:18.240 just won't admit to the gaps. Instead, they fill those in. 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:23.080 So let's take an example. The neurologist Oliver Sacks described 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:27.160 a patient that he called mister Thompson. Now, mister Thompson 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:32.200 had severe amnesia due to a condition known as Corsicosts syndrome, 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:35.880 which is caused by chronic alcoholism, which leads to a 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:40.320 deficiency an thiamine, which damages particular circuits in the brain. Now, 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:44.360 mister Thompson couldn't form new memories, and yet rather than 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:48.839 expressing confusion or admitting that he couldn't remember, he constantly 0:05:48.839 --> 0:05:53.360 invented new realities. Every few minutes, mister Thompson would introduce 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:57.760 himself as someone different, sometimes a shopkeeper, sometimes a businessman, 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:01.320 sometimes a priest. Once someone entered the room, he would 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:05.960 confabulate an entire backstory for them on the spot, convinced 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:08.440 that he had known them for years, and the moment 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:11.960 they left and returned, he had forgotten everything and would 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:15.320 create an entirely new identity for them. 0:06:15.880 --> 0:06:16.840 Why did this happen? 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:22.000 His brain unable to retrieve the real past improvised. It 0:06:22.040 --> 0:06:25.000 was like his mind refused to accept a blank space 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:30.040 where memory should be, so it generated plausible but false alternatives. 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:34.800 And confabulation doesn't just happen in corsicost syndrome. We see 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:38.120 it in many conditions, and each one gives us a 0:06:38.320 --> 0:06:44.360 different window into the mind's drive to create coherence. One 0:06:44.520 --> 0:06:48.480 extraordinary example comes from people who are blind, but they 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:51.920 don't know it, and they deny it. This condition known 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:56.080 as Anton's syndrome. This happens when damage to the visual 0:06:56.080 --> 0:06:58.560 cortex makes a person unable to see, but their. 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:00.400 Brain still believes they can hand. 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:03.960 So imagine there's a person named Dina and she has 0:07:04.000 --> 0:07:07.880 Anton syndrome, so she's blind. You walk into the room 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:10.280 and you say something like, oh, this is a nice room. 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:14.720 How would you describe this? And Dina will say something like, yeah, 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:18.040 this is nice. The room is bright, there are yellow 0:07:18.080 --> 0:07:20.560 curtains over there, there's a red chair in the corner, 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:23.360 even though that's not what the room looks like at all, 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:26.040 and in fact, the room is in total darkness. Anyway, 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:28.880 you might ask her to do something like can you 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:31.800 turn on the lamp, and she'll reach out with total 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:34.200 certainty about where the lamp is, even though there's no 0:07:34.320 --> 0:07:37.320 lamp there, and of course she'll fail to reach the 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:40.960 switch that she thinks is there, but rather than acknowledging that, 0:07:41.280 --> 0:07:45.600 her brain will generate explanations like, oh, I just miscalculated 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:48.040 the distance. And if you ask her to try again, 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:50.280 she might say, oh, you know, my arm hurts too 0:07:50.360 --> 0:07:54.440 much to keep trying again. Dina isn't trying to lie 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:59.400 to you. Her brain believes it it's fabricating reality in 0:07:59.440 --> 0:08:03.480 real time to compensate for the missing information, and this 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:11.520 is a fundamental lesson. The brain prioritizes coherence over accuracy. Now, 0:08:11.560 --> 0:08:14.880 one interesting feature of confabulations is that they tend to 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:19.560 contain a kernel of truth, so Dina might remember a 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:24.360 room like the one she's describing. One hypothesis about confabulations 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:27.760 is that their memories in the brain, but they're not 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:30.880 built from the right pieces given the situation at hand. 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:33.800 So one way to see this is that a patient 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:37.839 will confabulate if they're asked a question like where are 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:38.520 you right now? 0:08:38.720 --> 0:08:39.880 Or how did you get here? 0:08:40.600 --> 0:08:43.160 But if you ask them something about which they don't 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:47.479 have any pre existing knowledge, like who is Queen schmcgeggy, 0:08:48.160 --> 0:08:49.520 they will say that they don't know. 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:50.719 It's not that. 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:54.560 They're creating a fictional answer for things out of the blue. Instead, 0:08:54.920 --> 0:08:59.080 it's that somehow their confabulated reality is growing. 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:01.280 From the seeds of memory is that they have had. 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:04.560 So the hypothesis is that the problem in the network 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:08.640 is that they're not inhibiting irrelevant memories. 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:10.679 There are some pretty clever ways to. 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:12.439 Study this, and I'll link these in the show notes, 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:15.679 but the bottom line is that when I ask you 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:19.720 a question about your life right now, your brain kindles 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:23.880 lots and lots of possible pathways, and then certain brain 0:09:24.000 --> 0:09:26.640 areas like the orbit or frontal cortex. 0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:29.080 Squelch the activity of most. 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:32.679 Of the pathways that aren't relevant in the current circumstances. 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:36.959 But if your orbitor frontal cortex is damaged, it can't 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:41.000 suppress the irrelevant memories, and therefore those can come to 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:41.480 the top. 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:42.080 Now. 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:44.280 That might make it sound like this only happens when 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:47.000 there's damage to a particular part of the brain like 0:09:47.000 --> 0:09:50.439 the orbit or frontal cortex, but confabulation can also pop 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:54.439 up when people get damaged to bits of their thalamus 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:57.920 or the hypothalamus. Why, all these areas are parts of 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:01.600 a pathway called the circuit of pape, and this whole 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:07.520 circuit is involved for selecting relevant memories versus irrelevant ones. 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:12.560 The key surprising lesson here is that your current situation, 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:15.200 what you're looking at right now, doesn't just trigger a 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:20.319 particular memory, but instead tickles a whole world of possible memories, 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:22.960 which then other parts of the brain go through a 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:25.880 lot of trouble to squish down as they're looking. 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:27.080 For the right one. 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:29.640 And if you have less of that squishing, if you 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:32.560 have more noise in the system, then you get a 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:35.160 memory popping up that has nothing to do with your 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:39.320 current situation but feels every bit as real to you 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:43.280 as any other memory. I'll give you another example of confabulation. 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:48.120 In nineteen seventy four, the Supreme Court Justice William Douglas 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:51.200 had a stroke that made him paralyzed on his left 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:55.360 side and confine him to a wheelchair. Now, despite this, 0:10:55.960 --> 0:10:59.760 Douglas insisted on being discharged from the hospital, claiming that 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:03.679 he was perfectly fine. He dismissed reports of his paralysis 0:11:03.720 --> 0:11:07.240 as a myth, and when he was met with skepticism, 0:11:07.280 --> 0:11:10.480 he even invited reporters to join him on a hike, 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:14.800 a suggestion that was widely seen as absurd. He went 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:16.640 so far as to say that he had just been 0:11:16.760 --> 0:11:21.440 kicking football field goals with his paralyzed leg. Because of 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:26.520 this detachment from reality, Douglas was ultimately removed from his 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:30.360 position on the Supreme Court. But what he was experiencing 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:34.160 is called a nosagnosia, which is a condition where a 0:11:34.200 --> 0:11:39.000 person is completely unaware of their body's impairment. People will 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:43.880 adamantly deny their paralysis, not out of deception, but because 0:11:43.920 --> 0:11:48.520 their brain genuinely believes that they can move normally. Douglas 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:53.120 fabricated because of his brain's drive to construct a coherent narrative, 0:11:53.640 --> 0:11:56.960 and this is wild to witness. For example, imagine you 0:11:57.000 --> 0:11:59.760 meet a person who is paralyzed on one side and 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:04.160 they have a no sagnosia. So you gently ask the 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:07.760 person to put both hands on an imaginary steering wheel 0:12:07.760 --> 0:12:09.920 in front of them. So she puts one hand on 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:12.480 the steering wheel, and if you ask her why only 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:16.640 one hand, she will insist that both hands are in place. 0:12:17.240 --> 0:12:19.680 So you might come up with an idea and you ask. 0:12:19.480 --> 0:12:23.559 Her to clap her hands, so she'll just move one hand. 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:26.040 But she will claim to have clapped. 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:28.720 If you point out that there was no sound and 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:31.880 you ask her to try again, she might simply refuse 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:34.640 and give an excuse like she just doesn't feel like it. 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:38.600 This is just like Dina, who lost her vision but still. 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:42.120 Insists she can see even as she struggles to navigate 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:45.880 the room without bumping into things. Dina might attribute her 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:51.600 difficulties to poor balance or misplaced furniture, rather than acknowledging 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:56.320 her blindness. The key insight about a no sagnosia is 0:12:56.320 --> 0:13:00.480 that people like Justice Douglas are not lying. Their brains 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:07.160 are unconsciously generating explanations that maintain a coherent sense of reality, 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:28.679 even when that reality is fundamentally flawed. You can also 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:32.120 seek in fabulation in a very different situation. After a 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:35.439 person has undergone a split brain surgery. 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:36.400 Okay, so what is that? 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:39.240 The two hemispheres of the brain are linked by a 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:43.079 super highway of neurons. This is called the corpus colosum. 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:46.240 This is the bridge that connects the two halves of 0:13:46.240 --> 0:13:49.160 the brain, and a split brain surgery is when the 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:52.840 super highway gets cut with a scalpel such that the 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:56.439 two halves of the brain, the two hemispheres, are now 0:13:56.480 --> 0:14:01.080 operating independently. Usually these work in concert. Now you might 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:04.320 ask why would anyone ever have that surgery. It was 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:08.680 for people with severe epilepsy, where the seizures would spread 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:11.520 from one hemisphere to the other. So the idea was 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:15.719 that by destroying the road between the hemispheres, you disallow 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:19.160 the spread. So neurosurgeons started down this road in the 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:22.880 nineteen sixties, but they stopped once they realized that the 0:14:22.960 --> 0:14:27.440 surgeries were revealing something astonishing. So let's say someone has 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:30.360 just had this surgery, and what you do is you 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:35.040 now show a picture, like a snowy scene, but you 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:38.840 place that so only the right hemisphere can see that picture. 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:42.400 And there are several objects laid out on the table. 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:46.280 One of them is, let's say, a snow shovel, and 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:49.640 so the left hand, which is controlled by the right hemisphere, 0:14:50.040 --> 0:14:54.240 picks up the snow shovel. But when you verbally ask 0:14:54.440 --> 0:14:58.280 the left hemisphere why the hand just chose a snow shovel, 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:03.200 the person will canfabulate. They'll make up a story. They'll say, oh, 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:07.160 my hand picked up that snowshovel because I was recently 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:10.120 doing some gardening and this reminds me of it. So 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:15.400 their left hemisphere has no access to the right hemispher's information, 0:15:15.840 --> 0:15:19.680 but rather than admitting confusion, it just makes up a 0:15:19.720 --> 0:15:23.320 story to explain the action. I'll put a link about 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:26.240 split brain studies on the show notes. But what this 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:30.320 tells us is that our brain's storytelling function is not 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:34.040 just about narrating past events. It's active even in the 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:38.440 present moment. It shapes our reality as we go. In 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:42.600 all of these cases, from mister Thompson's endless reinventions of 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:46.160 himself to the blind woman who insists she can see, 0:15:46.560 --> 0:15:50.040 to the split brain patients who fabricate explanations for their 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:53.400 own actions, the brain is doing what it does best, 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:57.920 creating a cohesive narrative. It just so happens that sometimes 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:01.960 the facts don't cooperate. But these extreme cases lead us 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:06.440 to a bigger question. If confabulation happens in people with 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:08.120 brain damage. 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:09.120 What about the rest of us. 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:14.480 How reliable are our everyday memories and how often do 0:16:14.560 --> 0:16:17.080 we unknowingly rewrite our past? 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:17.760 Well? 0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:20.960 We do it far more often than we realize. False 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:24.440 memory doesn't just happen in injured brain. They happen all 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:28.600 the time in all of us. Our memories feel solid 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:32.800 and clear and trustworthy, but in reality they're full of fabrications. 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:35.360 The normal brain, just like the injured. 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:41.960 Brain, fills in gaps, and typically we don't notice. So 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:45.560 let's start in the nineteen eighties when Nelson Mandela died 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:49.560 in prison. Millions of people remember hearing about this and 0:16:49.640 --> 0:16:53.000 reading the headlines or seeing the news stories, so all 0:16:53.080 --> 0:16:55.600 of them were surprised when it was announced in twenty 0:16:55.640 --> 0:17:00.000 thirteen that Nelson Mandela had just died out of prison 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:03.200 in his home after having been released in nineteen ninety, 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:08.119 becoming President of South Africa, earning a worldwide reputation. Wait, 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:13.240 what hadn't he passed away three decades before? Weirdly, so 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:15.119 many people had that story wrong. 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:16.720 They thought he died in the eighties. 0:17:17.119 --> 0:17:19.920 That this is now known in the psychology literature as 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:24.560 the Mandela effect. They truly thought they had heard that 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:27.520 he had died in prison. We've all had the experience 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:30.320 of being convinced that something happened in a certain way, 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:33.960 only to later discover we were completely wrong. But it's 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:36.800 called the Mandela effect when it's not just you, but 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:40.439 thousands or millions of other people come to believe the 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:43.520 same false memory. There are so many examples of this. 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:48.679 Here's one. Everyone seems to remember Darth Vader saying Luke, 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:52.840 I am your father, when in fact that's not the line. 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:57.920 The line is no, I am your father. 0:17:58.960 --> 0:18:01.800 What where did the luke come from in everyone's memory? 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:04.760 Why do we all misremember that? And how about the 0:18:04.760 --> 0:18:08.160 movie Casablanca. Even if you've never seen it, you probably 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:11.880 know the most famous line where Ingrid Bergmann says play 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:15.679 it again, Sam, except that she never says it. 0:18:16.359 --> 0:18:19.800 The line in the movie is play it once, Sam, 0:18:20.040 --> 0:18:21.920 for all time's sake. I don't know what you mean. 0:18:21.960 --> 0:18:28.639 Miss Elton played them play as time goes by? 0:18:28.800 --> 0:18:32.080 So why does everyone believe that the line was play 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:35.760 it again, Sam? And here's another one. You probably remember 0:18:35.880 --> 0:18:38.800 the Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarves when 0:18:38.800 --> 0:18:42.280 the Witch says mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:45.240 fairest one of all? So you might be surprised to 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:47.160 know that she actually says. 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:52.280 Magic mirror on the wall. Who is the fairest one 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:52.600 of all? 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:57.239 But for some reason everyone started saying mirror mirror, And 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:01.240 that's now how we all misremember. The thing is that 0:19:01.320 --> 0:19:03.760 if you had a false memory about what was said 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:07.320 in these movies, that memory felt completely real to you, 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:10.640 as though you had seen that scene. The Mandela effect 0:19:10.640 --> 0:19:13.520 tells us that memory is not an accurate recording in 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:16.719 the past, but a flexible process, and often it can 0:19:16.760 --> 0:19:22.520 be socially influenced and collectively shaped. And the Mandela effect 0:19:22.520 --> 0:19:24.640 applies in all sensory domains. 0:19:24.720 --> 0:19:26.760 Take your visual memory. 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:30.960 Tons of people recall the monopoly man as having a monocle, 0:19:31.560 --> 0:19:34.560 but he doesn't and he never did. Here's a question, 0:19:35.000 --> 0:19:39.080 did the cartoon monkey Curious George have a tail or 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:42.760 not have a tail? Most people remember that he did, 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:45.679 but that's a false memory. If you look at the books, 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:49.760 Curious George has no tail at all. Okay, here's another one. 0:19:49.840 --> 0:19:52.600 Think of Pikachu and his tail. He actually does have 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:55.520 a tail. The tail is yellow, but does it have 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:58.840 a black tip? Most people, if you press them on it, 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:01.600 we'll say the tail has a black tip. Even though 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:05.359 his tail is completely yellow, his ears have black tips, 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:09.399 and somehow millions of people misremember it as being on 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:11.840 his tail. And I'll tell you another version of the 0:20:11.840 --> 0:20:14.879 Mandela effect that comes about for a slightly different reason. 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:19.879 Think about Oscar Meyer Wieners. You've certainly seen the ads 0:20:19.880 --> 0:20:23.000 and maybe even the Oscar Meyer truck driving around. Here's 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:27.800 the question, how is Meyer spelled? The large majority of 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:31.119 people will swear that it is spelled me e y 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:35.720 e r, but in fact it's m a y e r. 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:38.359 But m e y e r is a much more 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:42.040 common spelling, and so we misremember it. And here's another 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:45.200 example of that same thing. You may remember a children's 0:20:45.200 --> 0:20:50.040 book series called The Berenstein Bears. Essentially, everyone remembers this 0:20:50.080 --> 0:20:55.120 as being spelled barren Stein sti e n, when in 0:20:55.160 --> 0:21:00.440 fact the last five letters are stai n. It looks 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:04.480 like Baron stain bears. When this has pointed out to people, 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:07.400 they generally don't believe this until they go and pull 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:09.560 the book off their shelf and take a look. 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:11.359 I think that both these. 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:15.200 Examples about Oscar Meyer and Berenstein Bears are interesting because 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:18.920 they're shaped not necessarily by other people's memories, but instead 0:21:18.920 --> 0:21:23.560 by your expectations given the particulars of the language. In 0:21:23.600 --> 0:21:26.360 other words, some ways of spelling things are so much 0:21:26.440 --> 0:21:29.560 more common that you come to believe that's what you 0:21:29.680 --> 0:21:33.240 had seen, and like the other versions of the Mandela effect, 0:21:33.600 --> 0:21:36.320 you really, really are certain that this is how you 0:21:36.440 --> 0:21:39.920 saw it, And when you see the actual thing written down, 0:21:40.440 --> 0:21:44.159 it's hard to reconcile the certainty of your memory against 0:21:44.240 --> 0:21:47.440 the reality of what is in front of you. Think 0:21:47.440 --> 0:21:51.080 about all these examples of the Mandela effect, quiz your 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:54.359 friends on what they believe and remember, and think of 0:21:54.400 --> 0:21:57.920 what else you might have misremembered the movies, the characters, 0:21:58.240 --> 0:22:02.040 the logos, whatever, and a note at podcasts at Eagleman 0:22:02.119 --> 0:22:03.960 dot com to let me know because I can't get 0:22:04.119 --> 0:22:06.800 enough of these things. Okay, I think this is one 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:11.840 of the most fascinating ways to study confabulation in the individual. 0:22:11.920 --> 0:22:16.720 Healthy mind canfabulations which we normally never notice or gain 0:22:16.960 --> 0:22:20.399 an awareness of. And there's a closely related issue about 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:25.080 the way that our knowledge and beliefs can create unconscious 0:22:25.119 --> 0:22:29.760 distortions about what details we remember. In episode seventy, I 0:22:29.800 --> 0:22:33.800 told you about a nineteen thirty's study on a short 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:38.840 Native American fable called The War of the Ghosts. Participants 0:22:38.920 --> 0:22:41.920 read the story and then they wrote down their recollection 0:22:42.040 --> 0:22:45.240 of it immediately after, and then again a week after, 0:22:45.320 --> 0:22:49.280 and then again three months after. And as people recalled 0:22:49.359 --> 0:22:52.680 the story again and again through time, it turned out 0:22:52.960 --> 0:22:57.080 they smoothed out the details that were inconsistent with their 0:22:57.119 --> 0:23:01.280 own pre existing knowledge and belief systems. As they recalled 0:23:01.359 --> 0:23:04.760 the story over and over, it became more consistent with 0:23:04.880 --> 0:23:08.840 their worldview. As another example, consider the way we explain 0:23:09.119 --> 0:23:12.800 our own decisions. There are a bunch of studies on this, 0:23:12.880 --> 0:23:16.040 and essentially, when people are asked why they made a 0:23:16.080 --> 0:23:21.960 particular choice, they often canfabulate explanations. Their choices may have 0:23:21.960 --> 0:23:25.800 been influenced by subconscious factors they weren't aware of, but 0:23:25.840 --> 0:23:30.040 they'll create a convincing story to explain why they did. 0:23:29.880 --> 0:23:32.160 What they did. Why did you pick that car? 0:23:32.320 --> 0:23:32.480 Oh? 0:23:32.560 --> 0:23:33.560 I like the design? 0:23:34.080 --> 0:23:37.320 In reality, they were subtly influenced by an ad they 0:23:37.320 --> 0:23:40.199 were exposed to. Why do you believe what you believe? 0:23:40.680 --> 0:23:44.760 Because it's logical? In reality? So much of our belief 0:23:44.840 --> 0:23:48.840 is shaped by our culture and by our emotions, and 0:23:48.880 --> 0:23:53.040 our brains fill in justifications later. Why did you break 0:23:53.119 --> 0:23:57.440 up with that person? Well, we just weren't compatible In reality. 0:23:57.440 --> 0:24:00.000 Maybe they could have worked harder, but they have restructure 0:24:00.280 --> 0:24:04.280 painful memories to make the breakup seem inevitable. In other words, 0:24:04.280 --> 0:24:08.679 studies show that with romantic partners, if a relationship goes bad, 0:24:09.320 --> 0:24:12.200 we tend to remember the details of that relationship as 0:24:12.320 --> 0:24:16.920 more negative than they actually were. If a relationship improves, 0:24:17.400 --> 0:24:20.840 then we see it through rose colored glasses and remember 0:24:20.880 --> 0:24:24.480 things as better than they were. There's a sense in 0:24:24.520 --> 0:24:30.840 which we are always confabulating, turning complex realities into clear stories. 0:24:33.040 --> 0:24:36.960 Now all this may seem innocent enough, but in episode nineteen, 0:24:37.040 --> 0:24:40.240 I dove deep into why This sort of confabulation matters 0:24:40.280 --> 0:24:44.400 so much when it comes to something like eyewitness testimony, 0:24:44.640 --> 0:24:47.880 where there's real world consequence. And the issue that comes 0:24:47.960 --> 0:24:50.680 up here again is not just about the fragility of memory, 0:24:51.000 --> 0:24:54.440 but the way that we feel so certain about whatever 0:24:54.520 --> 0:24:58.040 memory gets served up to us, and our memories can 0:24:58.080 --> 0:25:02.080 get manipulated by very subtle cues. For example, in one 0:25:02.160 --> 0:25:06.399 study by my colleague Elizabeth Loftis, participants watched a video 0:25:06.440 --> 0:25:10.119 of a car accident and were asked a question how 0:25:10.200 --> 0:25:12.560 fast were the cars going when they hit each other? 0:25:16.240 --> 0:25:18.879