next article | contents

Remembering the way it wasn't

---

Professor Alan Parkin and his colleagues in Experimental Psychology, BIOLS, have been awarded two new grants, worth just under a quarter of a million pounds, for research into the brain mechanisms underlying false memories. False memories can be observed widely but they are particularly common in two groups of people, adults who have suffered certain forms of brain damage and young children. In both instances it can be shown that accurate recollections can be contaminated by 'memories' of events that did not happen.

One of the grants is from the Human Frontiers Scheme, which finances international research collaborations. "It's a multi-centred study based at Sussex, Harvard and Lausanne," explains Alan Parkin. "The aim of my part of the study is to understand more about why the brain-damaged people make the mistakes that they do. They all have lesions in the front part of the brain, the frontal cortex. That tells us that in some way the frontal cortex is involved in establishing the truth or untruth of memories. We want to know more about the brain mechanisms that allow memories to be verified - how we stop ourselves producing incorrect information."

The Harvard part of the study will involve a technique called functional neuro-imaging. This shows which parts of the brain are more active while a person is doing a particular activity. The researchers hope it will show the difference in brain activity between producing real and false memories.

Studies of brain damaged adults also provide an important clue as to why young children may be susceptible to false recollection. Different parts of the brain mature at different rates and the frontal cortex is the slowest - some estimates suggest that this region of the brain is not fully developed until the mid-teens. It is possible that younger children display false memories because the frontal cortex is not yet fully developed.

Alan Parkin, together with colleagues Wendy Clements and Ted Ruffman, is investigating this theory. The Economic and Social Research Council have awarded a grant for this research, which will examine how readily children of different ages produce false memories. The experiments involve showing children a short film followed by a summary. Some facts mentioned in the summary are incorrect and the extent to which children are misled by these facts provides a measure of susceptibility. This degree of susceptibility is, in turn, related to how well the children perform on tests which measure the developmental status of frontal lobe function. "Although this research is at an early stage," explains Alan, "it may eventually give us a much better understanding of a memory phenomenon which has become of considerable social and legal significance in recent years."

next article | contents

Friday June 20th 1997