Thread: Memory Memory Memory

Originally Posted by Zhaylin

In closing... I trust my dream memory and my interpretation of them about 95% of the time if not more. My waking memory, I trust maybe 30%.

Intuitively, this makes sense: research (e.g. Labar & Phelps, 1998) shows that emotionally arousing events facilitate the encoding, and depth of memory traces. That is to say, whilst aroused, memory formation is superior to memory formation when sober. Dreams are usually full of peculiarities, and inspirited with vivacity; therefore, it follows that memory formation shall be great. Conversely, most of waking-life is mundane, usual, and lacks emotional charge; unless one desires to remember such events as close to verbatim as possible, then they’re encoded rather superficially. Nonetheless, emotionally charged events in real life that have led to incredibly deep encoding are entirely evident in sufferers of PTSD.

Furthermore, memories are interdependent on other memories. That is, attempting to recall a memory activates neural pathways of related memories. As such, they may interfere with the accuracy and fluidity of the memory one is trying to recall. Again, waking-life is usually mundane and doesn’t vary considerably, and thus such memories have many commonalities and overlap – possible interference. On the other hand, many dreams are disparate in nature, and probably form distinct episodic memories. Attempting to recall a bizarre dream may activate less related neural pathways – it’s likely that there aren’t any. Thus, because dreaming is both highly arousing and distinct in nature, it seems to have an obvious advantage over waking life in memory formation.

As for childhood memories, Hyman, Husband, and Billings (1995) have shown how easy it is for these memories to be unwittingly fabricated. Experimenters ‘implanted’ contrived childhood memories into some of the participants, and some participants believed these memories to be accurate and valid representations.

Anyway, that’s what I seem to think (2 cents).