In early cognitive neuroscience as well, brain damage that caused abnormalities of function was the gateway to understanding Selleckchem BMS 354825 the key attributes of memory systems that should ordinarily work as they evolved to do, but the supposition was that subjects without such damage would display memory processes that behaved in a well-brought-up manner. Again, bibliometrics illuminates the trend. Between

1985 and 1999, only 63 papers in the Science Citation Index (Thomson Reuters) had “[brain AND memory AND false]” in their title, compared to 575 in the period 2000–2012; correcting for the doubling of the number of papers having brain as their topic between these periods, this still yields a 5-fold increase in the interest of the neuroscience community in the inaccuracies inherent in our memory. A particular contribution to this trend was provided by the introduction of noninvasive functional imaging methods, mainly fMRI, 17-AAG mw that collectively permit convenient investigation of the brain of healthy participants. Coupled to adaptation of classic protocols used in cognitive psychology to the scanner environment,

imaging has confirmed that the brain does indeed deserve its renewed reputation as an occasionally mischievous mnemonic device. All in all, the emerging for picture is that recollection is a reconstructive process that is naturally prone to various types

of intrusions, modifications, and even illusions (Schacter and Addis, 2007). This apparent sloppiness includes, among others, mistakes in identifying the source of the information (“misattribution”), incorporation of misleading and superfluous external or internal information, and bias by previous knowledge and belief (Schacter, 2001)—all indicating that either the trace is far from being a static replica of the original experience or that the recollective process acts on a veridical trace to produce a memory of questionable veracity. That these “sins of memory,” as Schacter aptly describes them, may have a selective advantage should not be forgotten; for example, one could suggest that retaining the gist without remaining bound for too long to the full details of an experienced episode may facilitate anticipation of future different scenarios and promote creative imagination (Bar, 2009 and Moulton and Kosslyn, 2009). Studies involving multiple techniques have identified a number of potential mechanisms by which memory might have the opportunity to drift from the ostensibly exact coordinates of real events. One might envisage that this could happen, for example, in the immediate offline fast compressed replay of an episode (Davidson et al.