Why do you sometimes remember something that never happened?

We tend to trust emotional memories.

“I remember it because it affected me so deeply”.

The truth is strong emotions can make an experience feel important and memorable. But emotional intensity does not guarantee that every detail has been sorted accurately.

Imagine that we are frightened, angry, embarrassed, or extremely excited. Our attention may become focused on certain things while other details receive less attention. Later, when we remember the event, our current emotions can also influence how we understand it. This is why two people can experience the same event and later remember it quite differently. This may simply bedifferent reconstructions of the same experiences.

Sometimes other people can influence our memories.

Imagine that you have an unclear memory from childhood. Someone repeatedly asks you, “Don’t you remember when you fell off that bicycle, and everyone laughed”?

At first your answer can be no. But if the suggestion is repeated, you may begin to imagine the scene. Over time, those imaginary details can start feeling familiar.

This is one reason we need to be careful with leading questions, particularly when talking to children or discussing uncertain memories. A question can sometimes introduce information that was not part of the original memory

Why would the brain do this process?

The brain is not trying to preserve the past like a perfect historian. It is just trying to help us to make sense of the world.

Memories help us recognise patterns, learn from experience and predict what might happen next. For this process to happen, the brain constantly connects the old information with the new. Though this flexibility is useful, it also has its own drawbacks. The same brain that allows us to learn, imagine and make connections can sometimes create memories that are not completely accurate. In other words, memory errors are partly the price we pay for having a flexible mind.