Memory: sins and virtues
Memory plays an important role in everyday life but does not provide an exact and unchanging record of experience: research has documented that memory is a constructive process that is subject to a variety of errors and distortions. Yet these memory sins also reflect the operation of adaptive aspects of memory. Memory can thus be characterized as an adaptive constructive process, which plays a functional role in cognition but produces distortions, errors, or illusions as a consequence of doing so.
memory experience cognition brain neuroscience