Memory often fails us. And not only by not saving what should have been saved. Often we remember something that actually … was not. Psychologists have created an online project that collects such false memories.
Do you remember about … what has never happened to you? No, this is not a quote from a Zen Buddhist parable. The creators of the unexpectedly popular Internet project falsememoryarchive.com (“archive of false memories”) offer us to tell about exactly such an event that remains in our memory, but which actually did not happen.
“We are accustomed to trusting our memory,” comments psychologist Veronika Nurkova, “and now it turns out that she is lying, either fitting memories to our current understanding of life, or creating completely unreal “facts”. Our brain, like a director, sometimes decides to “reshoot” failed episodes or insert other frames in order to more accurately follow the scenario in which (we think) our life should develop. The authors of the “archive” idea, professional psychologists, decided to act as producers, creating a project at the intersection of art and science. As an invitation to an exciting and safe journey through the innermost corners of our brain.