9 Brain Disorders That Completely Warp Your Reality
1. Confabulation: Fictional Memories
It's one thing to never forget a memory, it's another to simply invent them altogether.
This is the situation for Matthew, who suffers from a phenomenon called confabulation as the result of a permanent brain injury caused by a cyst. It is thought that the injury caused Matthew to suffer from amnesia but, rather than simply forgetting things, Matthew's brain would invent false memories to fill in the gaps, and they do not always match up with reality.
In one instance, he returned to work and was reassured by his employers that they would do everything they could to help him get back to working life. The next morning, however, he was convinced that they were about to fire him. This was his brain filling in the forgotten conversation with preconceptions he had about his hard-nosed employers.
Generally speaking, Matthew's confabulations will still have one foot in reality, but other sufferers will sometimes invent impossible memories such as flying to the moon.
Surprisingly, it is not that difficult to plant a false memory, even in a "normal" brain and, in one study, scientists managed to plant false memories in the minds of 50% of participants using doctored photographs.
It turns out that you can't always trust your own mind.
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