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Apr 7, 2023

False memories can form in the human brain in just a few seconds

Posted by in categories: law, neuroscience

Human memory has been shown to be highly fallible in recent years, but a new study on short term memory recall indicates that we can get details wrong within seconds of an event happening.

It has long been shown that human memory is highly fallible, with even ancient legal codes requiring more than one witness to corroborate accounts of a crime or events, but a new study reveals that people can create false memories within a second of the event being recalled.

The study, published this week in PLOS One, had hundreds of volunteers over the course of four experiments look at a sequence of letters and asked them to recall a single highlighted letter that they had been shown. In addition, some of the highlighted letters were reversed, meaning the respondent needed to recall that as well.

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