I wonder why the brain chooses to color outside the lines when it comes to memory. What's the benefit?

Mostly, it's a trade-off. The ability to remember things as well as we do also gives us the ability to misremember things, because of the way that neural pathways are created. The brain's ability to distinguish between things we actually saw and things we thought about seeing is pretty shaky, but that kind of flexibility also gives us tremendous power in other ways. (There's a really excellent book called The Seven Sins of Memory that talks about how most memory bugs are really features from a different angle.)

I wonder why the brain chooses to color outside the lines when it comes to memory. What's the benefit?

One of the things that I learned in psychology is that our mind has a template for many different things, and so even from the beginning our memories are often colored by the way we think such things are "suppose" to be.

HA! From the description:

Consider this scenario: if you were watching a circle of people passing a basketball and someone dressed in a gorilla costume walked through the circle, beat his chest, and exited, of course you would notice him immediately--wouldn't you? [Researchers] filmed such a scene and showed it to people who were asked to track the movement of the ball by counting the number of passes made by one of the teams. Approximately half of the participants failed to notice the gorilla.

Hilarious. I want to believe I have a knack for remembering because I write essays. I never bring a notebook to a set, but can do a fairly thorough report. I want to believe it, but you know, still human and not Super Memory Girl. Makes me wonder how much I've written is what I thought I saw, and not what really happened. That's troublesome.

Perkins - you around? E-mail sent to your gmail.

My brain is weird. The little tiny stuff I do all the time--I COMPLETELY forget it once I've done it. I can't tell you how many times I've pumped gas, gotten back into my car, looked in my side view mirror and I don't remember putting my gas cap back on. And yet, when I double check the mirror, the gas cap is magically on. It's like I totally skip those steps in my head. Freaky.

Sometimes, I don't even offer my own opinion because I'm too interested in the discourse that others are contributing to. I'm one of those people who is very wishy-washy. I can see both sides of the story so well, that I often have a hard time taking a firm stance of my own. I'll end up saying "what they said" to both sides and then people get pissy with me

Sail, I do this all the time!

Owen's winter coat came in today! Yay! Just in time for more snow this coming week.

Not a kerfuffle, but should my rage overwhelm me, I hope my lawyer flags MiracleMan on voir dire. But could I ever get a jury of my peers? Who are my peers? Odds are a disabled person would not be in the pool, as I've been a registered voter for ten years and never called. The retarded person question that started that discussion lo all those hours ago is complicated by the high incidence of cognitively impaired people being willing, even eager, to give false confessions when "FrankenTim" get started on that whole "Now, Jimmy, she's your neighbor. We know you wanna help us out," thing. Because they do. And they wanna be like everybody else so they pretend to understand. The disability community is very concerned about this.

Allyson, welcome to Bitches! Have a tiara.

Good morning everyone. I got to sleep in this morning AIWFG.

ETA: Also

Owen's winter coat came in today! Yay! Just in time for more snow this coming week.

Am I the only one who was picturing Owen suddenly growing a nice think undercoat of fur?

Yeah, thought so.

I am going to kill my son. I swear it. I am going to kill him.

He is a 12-year-old boy working on his science fair project with his best friend. ALSO a 12-year-old boy. Science fair project due Monday.

I think you can see where this is going.

He is arguing me over every. single. step he has to do, because he'd rather be playing with his friend.

DUH. He doesn't get to redefine the project -- we get to hand it in late if we go on vacation, it doesn't really say we have to include a summary, I don't have to start it if I'm still eating Jell-o -- and yet I have to fight every single battle.

URGE TO MAIM.

Remind me: this is just a 12-year-old boy. NOT A DEMON FROM HELL.

I can't tell you how many times I've pumped gas, gotten back into my car, looked in my side view mirror and I don't remember putting my gas cap back on. And yet, when I double check the mirror, the gas cap is magically on. It's like I totally skip those steps in my head. Freaky.

That's the wonder of procedural memory.

There could be some overlap, Betsy. But I still wouldn't break out the stakes yet.