False memories of the kind that Chabris and Simons discuss are ubiquitous in healthy people, and there are lots of interesting wrinkles in the literature descri

False memories of the kind that Chabris and Simons discuss are ubiquitous in healthy people, and there are lots of interesting wrinkles in the literature describing these memory errors — here are two of my favorites. First, even individuals with extraordinary memory abilities are susceptible to false memory phenomena [0]. People with what's been called "highly superior autobiographical memory" (HSAM) can, for any given date in the last decade or two, tell you what they did, what they ate, and what the weather was like with extraordinary accuracy. However, when tested with standard laboratory tasks that induce false memories, they are just as vulnerable as typical individuals. Second, focal brain injury may reduce susceptibility to false memories [1]. Full disclosure, this is some of my own published work. We investigated the effects of damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) on false recall in a standard laboratory test involving lists of conceptually similar words (the DRM task [2]). Patients with vmPFC damage showed reduced (but not abolished) false memories relative to healthy comparison participants. This is especially interesting to us because vmPFC appears to be necessary for decision-making in complex situations, particularly when prior knowledge must be integrated into ongoing behavior. We believe that deficits in decision-making accompanying vmPFC damage may stem from the same root cause the reductions in false memory that we observed. Regardless, we’re not recommending vmPFC resection for healthy people seeking more accurate memory (not yet, anyway). Although these are highlights, empirical work on false memories and other kinds of memory errors extends back more than a century. It’s a fascinating domain, and I very much enjoy working in it. More information on a variety of related topics can be found at my website [3] and in my published work (see Publications). [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24248358 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24248358 [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24872571 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24872571 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deese%E2%80%93Roediger%E2%80%93McDermott_paradigm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deese%E2%80%93Roediger%E2%80%9... [3] http://david-e-warren.me http://david-e-warren.me