Too true about the liberties we allow our memories to take. My mom is 93, and still of surprisingly sound mind. But during the isolation of the pandemic, where her contact with most of her friends was limited to skype or facetime, she really began to question whether her mind was still operating in a trustworthy fashion.
She and I since then have had many long conversations about neural plasticity, about memory, about our tendency to overwrite tangible memory with 'editorial" recall, that basically our own minds become like some drawn out game of Telephone, where even recollections that we emphatically believe to be The Absolute Truth As It Happened can and maybe should be called into question. Very few, if any, of us are immune to this, regardless of our age. But it sure does get more tricky to navigate as we get older!
Sept. 22, 2022, 12:46 p.m. - Mike Ferrentino
Too true about the liberties we allow our memories to take. My mom is 93, and still of surprisingly sound mind. But during the isolation of the pandemic, where her contact with most of her friends was limited to skype or facetime, she really began to question whether her mind was still operating in a trustworthy fashion. She and I since then have had many long conversations about neural plasticity, about memory, about our tendency to overwrite tangible memory with 'editorial" recall, that basically our own minds become like some drawn out game of Telephone, where even recollections that we emphatically believe to be The Absolute Truth As It Happened can and maybe should be called into question. Very few, if any, of us are immune to this, regardless of our age. But it sure does get more tricky to navigate as we get older!