More Brain Points

False, Suppressed, or Unencoded Memory?

In September of 2018, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was accused of sexually assaulting Christine Blasely Ford, a clinical psychologist, while the two were still teenagers. Many speculated that the accusation was false for many reasons including the fact that Ford waited until Kavanaugh’s nomination thirty-six years later to bring up the allegations. While the Washington Post mentions that Ford had spoken on the incident in couple’s therapy in 2012, no record besides her husband’s words mention Kavanaugh’s name specifically. (Brown)

One may begin to wonder if such allegations are true when considering the way episodic memories are encoded and retrieved under stressful conditions. While studying the formation and persistence of fear-inducing context memories, Radulovic et al found that partially redundant and partially differentiated mechanisms mediate the encoding and retrieval of recent memories versus the persistence of memories over a long period of time (Yamawaki). This may imply that Ford’s memory may have been suppressed during the time she did not speak about it, may have altered over time due to the differentiated mechanisms of encoding and storing memories, or may be entirely made up in general.

One may be able to foresee the implications of these scientific findings beyond the Kavanaugh case of 2018 and may ask the following questions: Who do we believe? How dependable are lie detector tests if true memories may be altered or registered incorrectly in the human mind? And furthermore, how much of the #metoo movement is true?

Sources:

Brown, Emma. “California Professor, Writer of Confidential Brett Kavanaugh Letter, Speaks out about Her Allegation of Sexual Assault.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 27 Sept. 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/investigations/california-professor-writer-of-confidential-brett-kavanaugh-letter-speaks-out-about-her-allegation-of-sexual-assault/2018/09/16/46982194-b846-11e8-94eb-3bd52dfe917b_story.html.

Naoki Yamawaki, Kevin A Corcoran, Anita L Guedea, Gordon M G Shepherd, Jelena Radulovic; Differential Contributions of Glutamatergic Hippocampal→Retrosplenial Cortical Projections to the Formation and Persistence of Context Memories, Cerebral Cortex, , bhy142, https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhy142