Glimmers of how memories might be created out of mere wisps of suggestion began to emerge this summer, after a May conference at Harvard Medical School on the neurological bases of false memories. But all the scattered fragments remain physically linked. The job of assembling them falls to a part of the brain called the limbic system. Like a neural file clerk, it pulls disparate aspects of each memory from the separate file drawers scattered throughout the cortex, gathering them into a cohesive whole. For one thing, people routinely take perfectly accurate snippets and assemble them incorrectly.
Time goes by.
But if the frontal lobes are damaged, their owners cannot remember where a memory came from, explains psychologist Daniel Schacter of Harvard. What gives the memory a feeling of authenticity is that authentic parts are included. Even in people with perfectly fine frontal lobes, a memory's origin deteriorates more quickly than its other aspects, says psychologist Stephen Ceci of Cornell University. From transcripts and session notes, Loftus, a psychologist at the University of Washington, found therapists who routinely told patients that if they cannot remember abuse, they should imagine it as an aid to memory. Many therapists also use hypnosis, which makes patients willing to internalize suggestions and to call any image they see a memory.