Strange Science: Why Your First Memory Could Be Wrong

Whether it is an overview of a swimming pool, a pet or a parent, most of us retain a first memory in our brain.

But when it comes to more vivid memories of our early months, there is We have just re-examined an illusion made by ourselves.

A recently published British study of about 6600 people revealed that over a third claimed to have memories from 2 years old.

These people were middle-aged and older adults – were convinced that their first memory was more than a year old.

The researchers began to scrutinize these memories by asking the participants to detail their first memory with their age at

They were told that their memories should be memories they remembered, not those based on a memory. old picture or a family story.

With the descriptions they retrieved, the researchers studied their content. , language and nature, then evaluated the likely reasons why people claimed to have memories of an age that science tells us is impossible.

As many of these memories were dated before the age of two, researchers suggest that these fictitious memories were based on memorized fragments. As a result, what the person who remembers has in mind by remembering these early memories is a mental representation consisting of memorized fragments of early experience and certain facts or knowledge. (19659002) Over time, such mental representations are experienced in a recollective way when they come to mind and, for the individual, they are simply "memories" whose content is strongly linked to a particular moment.

In particular, very old fictitious memories were more common in middle-aged and older adults – and about four in ten of this group "The person who remembers them does not know that it's fictional, "said Professor Martin Conway of the University of London

" In fact, when people are told that their memories are fake they often do not believe it.

"This is partly due to the fact that the systems that allow us to remember things are very complex, and it is only when we are 5 or 6 that we form adult memories in because of the way the brain is developing and because of our growing understanding of the world. "

Even rats are sticking to bad decisions

Here's a situation you've probably been in.

You stand in a queue at the cafe and it's likely that waiting for your long black morning will make you miss the bus or

In d In this way, you choose to stay in the queue because you have already spent too much time in it for all to be in vain.

Another example might be to get him out in a bad wedding or draining your savings on a half-finished renovation that's proven twice as expensive as you'd expected.

This inability to reduce our losses is what psychologists and economists call "the mistake of unrecoverable cost". "- And it is a problem long considered unique to humans.

But it turns out that we are not the only ones to stick to decisions that we know to be irrational. [19659002] Researchers at the University of Minnesota just observed the same phenomenon in rats and mice, in a study that saw both animals and humans While mice and rats passed their From a limited budget to looking for flavored food, humans were spending the same amount of time looking for what humans were looking for – entertaining videos on the web

Rats and mice ran around a maze that contained four food delivery locations, or "restaurants", as the doctoral student Brian Sweis and his colleagues called it.

At the entrance to each restaurant, the animal was informed They had an hour to gather Food and each entry meant that they had to answer a question like, "Am I willing to spend 20 seconds of my budget waiting for my dumpling of cherry flavored food?" "with a delay of 1 to 30 seconds.

Similarly, humans saw a series of web galleries and were informed of the delay by a download bar

This meant that humans had to answer an equivalent question : ready to devote 20 seconds of my time budget to waiting for the video of my kitten? "

In this way, each subject of each species revealed his own subjective preferences for individual food flavors or video galleries.

In this task, each entry It took two decisions, a first decision when the delay was revealed, but without counting, then a second decision if the offer was accepted when the subjects could leave and change d & # 39; 39, notice during the countdown.

The three species become more reluctant to give up the longer they waited – demonstrating the unrecoverable costly mistake.

As such, the project relied on a number of recent breakthroughs to find mice, rats, and humans using similar neural systems. these different types of decisions, that mice and rats also show regrets after making mistakes, and that even mice can learn to avoid these errors by deliberating first.

But by playing the three species, researchers get a glimpse of how different parts of the brain make different types of decisions – and that there is an evolutionary history to the flaws that make us human

The robot that smells

A robot who could tell you how bizarre he feels?

Whatever you think, American scientists have developed a prototype that can do more or less.

The Cornell University robot has a skin that covers a grid of texture units, whose shapes change depending on the robot's feelings.

Guy Hoffman, Assistant Professor, gave a TEDx lecture on "Soul Robots". came from the animal world, based on the idea that machines should not be thought of in human terms. "I've always thought that robots should not be modeled on humans or be copies of humans," he said. "We have a lot of interesting relationships with other species: robots could be considered as one of those" other species ", do not try to copy what we do, but interact with us with their own language, drawing on in our own instincts. "

Hoffman did not have any specific application For this reason, proving that it could be done was a big step forward.

"It really gives us another way to think about how robots could be designed.

Future challenges included adapting the technology to an autonomous robot – whatever form the robot takes – and making the technology more sensitive to the robot's immediate emotional changes.