Who Owns Your Memories?

By: Neda Brinster

Neuroscience News. "The Utility of Memories Dictates Their Place in Our Brain." Neuroscience News, 21 July 2023,

Once we have formulated a memory and integrated it into the depths of our brain, how can an external force have any ownership or influence over it? Our brains, nested under 22 bones capable of enduring 1,200 pounds of pressure, can be manipulated by the slightest force that can change a memory and change a life. Memories are the foundation of character, relationships, and truth, impacting our everyday lives. One’s character and personal identity rely upon a foundation that can be easily manipulated. Parental influence, emotions, childhood experiences, neurological diseases, and even brainwashing are all examples of internal and external influences that play a prominent role in the formation and manipulation of memory. Such forces can’t always be regulated or controlled. Control is synonymous with ownership. Due to the uncontrollable influences of internal and external factors on memory, an individual does not own their memories. Such lack of ownership has resulted in consequences that are integrated into our society: present in our legal systems, medical systems, and everyday lives.

Memory makes us who we are. Our life experiences rely on memory to reflect, change, grow, and learn from our past. Without life experiences, without a life narrative, one can never fully understand themselves. John Locke, an English philosopher during the Enlightenment, states, “as far as [a] consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person; it is the same self now as it was then; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done .” In simpler terms, John Locke believes that one’s identity relies on how far their memory extends into the past. He reasons that if one can remember an experience, then they have had that experience. The reverse is also true. If someone can’t remember an experience, they have not had such an experience. And so, the relationship between memory and identity is established. One’s identity is made up of experiences, and such experiences are reliant on memory. Thus, without memory, the experiences that make up personal identity are removed. This idea is the foundation of a remarkable phenomenon - if your identity relies on your memories, what are the consequences when the memories that make up your identity aren’t your own?

Media

Two jellybeans walk towards a row of globes with vacuum cleaners attached at the hip. The jellybeans suction each memory into an endless pit without regard to the girl screaming for them to stop. This scene is part of the classic movie, "Inside Out," directed by Kelly Mann. "Inside Out" follows the life of Riley, an eleven-year-old girl who has just moved to San Francisco. As Riley attempts to navigate this move, her emotions are there to help her: Joy, Sadness, Anger, and Fear. Although seemingly childish, “Inside Out” crafts a beautiful message to all audiences about handling our emotions and the influence of memory on character development. Mann produced this movie with an understanding of the malleability of our memory due to external and internal influences. In this movie, such influences include a move to a new environment, new friends, and depression. Although the idea of control over one's memory is complex, 'Inside Out' portrays this message in a kid-friendly way. For example, in one scene, Joy is walking behind two jellybean characters sucking up glass balls, or memories, that they deem unnecessary. The jelly beans are discussing the four years of piano lessons Riley took. Rather than deciding to keep the more sophisticated songs, they throw all memories of piano away…except for “Chopsticks” and “Heart and Soul”, two of the most well-known songs that require minimal knowledge of the piano or skill. Joy, the third character in this scene, argues for them to stop throwing away memories because they are all critical. Joy continues and says that each memory came from a crucial time in Riley's life and powers a different aspect of Riley's personality. Of course, her pleas are disregarded. This scene depicts the seemingly irrational and careless process of our formation of memory in a humorous but accurate way. It portrays the role of memory in shaping one's character and simultaneously shows the lack of ownership over memories. As expressed through this movie, many forces control the formation and storage of memories. With Joy and the jellybeans representing such influences, Riley does not have ownership over her memories. Instead, such control is left to an emotion and jelly bean workforce. As per Mann's intention, 'Inside Out' proves the lack of ownership one has over their memories. Although we don't have a jellybean workforce in our minds, we have other influences that shape our memory.

Influence of Memory on Crime

The basis of solving a crime revolves around the formation and recollection of memory. Apart from physical evidence such as video or voice recordings, a witness memory is the next best thing. Eyewitness testimony is the backbone of our legal system. A witness is relied upon to honestly and accurately recall all details of a crime, to provide evidence in a case and identify perpetrators. However, the subconscious lack of ownership over one's memories can permanently change a defendant's life and even convince an individual that they are a criminal. All individuals, including eyewitnesses, are susceptible to memory bias, false information, and misinformation. No matter one's intention, a legal system can’t reliably stand on someone's memory when their memory isn't their own. This phenomenon is reflected in a study by researchers Julia Shaw and Stephen Porter titled "Constructing Rich False Memories of Committing Crime." They investigated whether or not young adults can generate false memories told to them about a 'crime' they committed during adolescence. They compared complete false memories of committing crimes involving police contact to false memories of emotional events and to true memories. Using confirmed actual familial events mixed with false events, the researchers asked participants to explain what happened during each event. At the end of the study, 70% of participants developed false memories and confessed in extreme detail to crimes they never committed. Their research proved that one's memory is so susceptible to outside influences that when told about an event that never happened, their brain immediately incorporated it as truth. How can a court rely on memory when an individual may generate a completely false memory, convince themselves they committed a crime, and produce vivid details? Although the participants took complete ownership of events that never occurred, they proved that individuals can not take ownership of their memories. If they could, the participants would have confessed to 0% of the false memories told to them involving crime, as they would have been able to identify their memories against the fake events. Instead, the participants' memories were so easily malleable and influenced that they convinced themselves of events that never happened.

An unreliable source creates an unreliable system, with the potential for innocent people to be convicted for crimes they never committed. The problem of memory ownership’s impact on the justice system is further represented in the ongoing question of why innocent people plead guilty. According to the Innocence Project, an organization working to bring justice to those wrongfully convicted, roughly 11% of the United States’ 349 DNA exonerated clients plead guilty to crimes, despite being innocent. Although no one individual has the same reasoning or circumstances, one may plead guilty to a crime because of a false memory. If complete ownership over one's memories were possible, our legal system, crime evidence, and court procedures would be transformed.

Neurological Disorders

Imagine you have just received a remote control car. You hold the brand-new car in your hands, looking at all of its exciting features. Suddenly, the car jerks out of your hands and runs along the floor. The car may have been in your hands just a minute ago, but the remote control has the ultimate power. Now, apply this same phenomenon to memory. Although memories may be stored inside your brain, as the car was in your hands, some other force acts as the remote control. In this case, that other force is a neurological disorder. According to the United Nations, nearly one in six people worldwide suffers from a neurological disorder, many impacting memories. Neurological disorders are capable of transforming or deleting one's memory without consent. When an individual is susceptible to such a disease that can reform and destroy memories, it is impossible to display ownership over them.

This phenomenon is seen in those who suffer from schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a neurological disorder that 'affects a person's ability to think, feel, and behave correctly.' Schizophrenia has associated symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking and speech, and paranoia. According to the Rethink Mental Illness blog, many people with schizophrenia suffer from recollection and memory problems. Rather than recall actual events, many create their own. In the blog post, “Schizophrenia is not a Lifestyle Choice”, the author Jane (last name not included) describes her symptoms. She states, "I've seen things that were not there, walking a blurred line between reality and fantasy." She continues with, "I saw a UFO outside my campus, and at night there'd be blood dripping down my walls." These vulnerable descriptions allow readers to gain a small insight into what it is like to live with schizophrenia. However, such descriptions of UFO sightings and murder scenes also offer a deeper understanding of memory. Although there were never UFO sightings, this still shows that an individual has just as much control over false memories, as they do real ones. Jane corrects a common misconception in her blog post: schizophrenia is a lifestyle. Jane demonstrates that memory is malleable and easily created by faulty neurological functioning. Just as people who don't suffer from Schizophrenia don't choose the memories they remember, those suffering from the disorder don't choose to see blood smeared along the walls. The common denominator in both instances is that no individual can control their memories. Those with neurological disorders suffer from heightened consequences of this that are rarely understood.

Parental Influence on Childhood Memory

Our childhood experiences shape the adults we become. Social, emotional, and behavioral connections are formed during adolescence and continue into adulthood, playing an essential role in shaping one's identity. Our childhood experiences become the foundation of memory. However, such memories are heavily subject to manipulation from parental influence, placing ownership over memories into the hands of a parent more so than into the hands of the child. As Sue Shellenbarger, author of, “The Power of Earliest Memories”, says, "Parents play a bigger role in helping determine not just how many early memories children can recall, but how children interpret and learn from the events of their earliest experiences." This parental influence was evaluated in a research study by Franca Tani, Alice Bonechi, Carole Peterson, and Andrea Smorti, titled, “Parental Influences on Memories of Parents and Friends”. This study aimed to understand the role parent-child relationship quality has on childhood memories of parents and friends. As part of the study, researchers found that parents have an extreme impact on the memories of their children, highlighted during preschool years. They also found several factors that influence the quality of childhood memories, including parental involvement in children's lives, discussion of memories during childhood, and a 'rich and affectionate' relationship between parent and child. The critical role of parents on the quality of their children's childhood memory displays the lack of ownership an individual has in their memory. When a parent can mold their child's adolescent memories, can the child truly have their own memories? Ownership comes with responsibility, and when the responsibility of memories comes from the parent, an individual's childhood is not their own.

Brainwashing and Medical Advancements

An individual struggles with deleting photographs of a bad ‘ex’ off their phone, but without hesitation would take a pill that erases said ex from their mind forever. The disconnect between ownership and memories is continuing to grow with recent innovations in medicine that target ‘bad memories’ or memories that bring about emotional distress. In an effort to create a cure for mental health diseases, scientists are utilizing brainwashing methods. Brainwashing is one of the most powerful tactics used in cults, kidnappings, churches, and many other institutions, to possess complete mental power over an individual. When someone is brainwashed, their social, political, or religious beliefs are manipulated to conform to an idea. Captors use brainwashing as a tactic to establish dependency and dominance over the victim, erasing any potential ownership the victim has over their thoughts or memories. Such a cruel and abusive act has been adopted by our medical systems, used as a way to treat mental health disorders such as PTSD and depression. The formation of memories, known as consolidation, is when protein molecules establish a current flow around synapses and are continuously replaced throughout the day. In order to keep a memory over time, neural conditions must be strengthened between protein and synapse. Scientists studying treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder have manipulated the consolidation of long lasting memories to produce a ‘mindwipe’. Mindwipe is a type of brainwashing that targets memories, rather than active thoughts, completely erasing or manipulating memory to produce an intended result. The idea behind treating conditions such as PTSD, is to block the memories from such traumatic events from even forming. This scientific research has led to the development of a newly cultivated drug which blocks the receptor response from the synapse, inhibiting the consolidation of a specific memory. Although this would only work during active recall of such traumatic memory, the drug would successfully block that memory from forming.

Often referred to as a ‘double edged sword’, memory supressment has raised ethical concerns. How can brainwashing, a stigmatized force behind criminal behavior, be ethically utilized in medicine? Many people, however, advocate for the effectiveness of erasing painful memories. According to Dr. Anders Sandberg, a computational neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, “Our natural memory is already imperfect, biased, and in many cases, made up. So, perhaps we shouldn’t see it [mindwipe medicine] as anything totally different from the editing of our own memory. We already do every day”. Dr. Sandberg argues that as individuals, we already don’t have control over memory, he equates this lack of control with the same lack of control that would come with taking a drug that controls one’s memory. However, this solution threatens our ownership over memory, and even greater, identity, even further.

Conclusion

Memories are not a reflection of your identity but rather a reflection of society. Society, or “a voluntary association of individuals for common ends,” has a greater impact on the intimate memories inside your head than you do. Our natural memory has become so overwhelmed by societal influences we no longer have pure memory. As Martha Farah, author of “Neuroethics: An Introduction with Readings,” once said, “Having truthful memories is not simply a personal matter. Strange to say, our own memory is not merely our own; it is part of the fabric of the society in which we live.” Lack of ownership over memories is unnerving. We live inside of our minds 24 hours a day, seven days a week, through memories, dreams, and thoughts. The idea of a societal influence having greater control over your mind is unnerving, almost threatening. The implications of memory extend even further. Our identity and character are based on memory, and when we don’t have control over our memories, we don’t have control over ourselves.

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