BRAIN connections that encourage the formation of false memories have been identified. Such memories appear to be more likely in people with high-quality links between neurons in a particular brain area.
Individuals often recall the same events differently or report memories of things they should have been too young to recall. To find out if a tendency to manufacture false memories is reflected in brain structure, at the University of Barcelona in Spain and colleagues induced them in 48 students in the lab.
The participants were asked to read four lists of 14 semantically related words, in which each list had an absent 鈥渓ure鈥� word. For example, a list including 鈥渟eat鈥�, 鈥渟ofa鈥�, 鈥渢able鈥� and 鈥渟tool鈥� had 鈥渃hair鈥� as its lure.
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The students wrote down as many words as they could recall and subsequently had their brains scanned. Those who 鈥渞ecalled鈥� more lures were assumed to be more prone to false memories, and were found to have higher-quality neural connections, called axons, in the superior longitudinal fascicle, known to be associated with gist-based memory (Journal of Neuroscience, ).
