
Your Memories Are Reconstructed Every Time You Recall Them
Memory is not like a video recording. Every time you recall a memory, your brain reconstructs it from fragments, often filling in gaps with plausible-but-false details. This is why eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and why leading questions can literally implant false memories. Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus demonstrated that people can be made to remember entire events — like being lost in a shopping mall as a child — that never happened.