What Do You Recall?
I’ve just been watching Total Recall. Not the Arnie one, the other one. Besides being an unreal adrenalin-fest that is setting my Sympathetic Nervous System on FIRE, the heightened neural function has got me thinking. Unusual for 9pm on a Monday night. The discussion is around having memories implanted by changing body chemistry. i.e. You choose the ‘memory’ you want, perhaps something you might not be able to afford or ever dare to do, and they inject you with the chemicals required to make you believe you did it. Affair with George Clooney? Here you are luv, can’t you almost smell the Nespresso from here? Trip to Paris? Oui, and here are a couple of extra kgs on your bum from all the pastries.
We already know this to be the case, don’t we? Our memories are simply a bunch of chemically modulated neurones firing at a particular frequency, painting a picture of something we assume to be true. And the more we play that movie in our minds, the deeper it becomes entrenched. The more connections we make for that chemical tale, the more we interpret this imprint as fact. The Reality. For it is our reality, but is it actuality? Our cells tell us it is. But is it?
It is said that “the mind doesn’t know the difference between something real, or imagined, if repeated in great and vivid detail”.
Our technology is not such that we can simply inject ourselves with holidays to Disneyland and weekends with River Phoenix, (Yes, yes, I know, STILL.) but could we not at least try?
Would it be possible to enhance our happiest or most thrilling memories, and modulate our most distressing ones?
Could we, with regular, repeated and comprehensive practise, modify the way we perceive our past, and hence potentially change how we react to current situations and circumstances?
And who would that make us, if we could?
So please excuse me, whilst I go and imagine eating this lot:
No Turkish Delight in my imaginary box.
Who am I kidding? Imma eat them for realz.
What “memory” would you implant? And hands off River and Johnny Depp, they’re mine.
…From The Ashers xx
I guess CBT and hypnotherapy is kind of this? Both work on changing our ingrained neurological responses. Effectively, teaching our brains to remember differently.
And then there’s the idea that we don’t remember the event, but actually our most recent remembering of it.
I love remembering. I am a sentimental fool. And I find memory bias totally fascinating. Lots of my writing is based around different kinds of bias. Here, I got you this list – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_memory_biases
I love it too Anna. Thanks for the list! Going there now. See you next month….
I have a vivid memory of listening to the The Cure with my father… now my dad was around long enough for this to be possible, but the song I remember listening to with him came out after he died…
So, either I’m remembering the wrong song, or the wrong band – or it never happened – but the memory is so vivid… but I know it isn’t true…
Weird…
YES! I have so many of those. I’m 100% sure and my Mum insists something different. Also one that I’m SURE I have as a memory, but I was actually in utero. What’s with that?
Total Recall, you are one crazy movie.