False Memories, or Why We’re So Sure of Things We’re Wrong About

I’ve been interested in memory for as long as I can remember. In college, I studied neuropsychology in addition to philosophy, and interacted with patients suffering from memory deficits. One such deficit, known as confabulation, involved patients coming up with fantastic stories about absurd scenarios as if they were autobiographical memories.

What intrigued me about this phenomenon is not what these patients got wrong — which was a lot — but rather what they got right. Despite being false, there was an air of plausibility to their confabulations.

Source: duke.edu