I Know I Read It Somewhere

One of my favorite recently learned terms is "source amnesia." I read about it (somewhere!) in the last six months, and then was reminded of it again a couple of weekends ago in an op-ed in the Star Tribune by Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt (reprinted from the New York Times).

Speaking from the neuroscience field, Wang and Aamodt tell us that the human brain stores facts at first in the hippocampus, but that every time we recall the information, it is reprocessed and re-stored. Over time, the fact finds its final home in the cerebral cortex. But by the time it gets there, it has become disconnected with any memory of where we first heard or read it. Thus the term "source amnesia."

When you don't remember where you learned something, it's pretty hard to be critical about the quality of the information, right? It could be an out-and-out lie, and you may have even known that when you first heard it, but by the time it's in long-term memory, it's the truth, as far as your memory is concerned.

This can lead to the manifestly unfair situation where a person (say, a political candidate) has been misrepresented, but cannot correct the information without repeating the inaccuracy, and inadvertently reinforcing it. It also seems to me that it could account for a lot of urban legends that start out with "a friend of a friend" and then lead to stories of dogs in microwave ovens and vanishing hitchhikers.

Wang and Aamodt have published a book called Welcome to Your Brain. It sounds pretty interesting. I'll have to pick up a copy if I can just remember next time I go to a bookstore.