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NEW YORK (AP) – In testimony before a Senate committee, the woman who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her while she was a teenager briefly plunged into memory. Experts say that she was right.
When asked on Thursday how she could be sure it was Kavanaugh who had put her hand to shut up, psychologist Christine Blasey Ford cited levels of chemical messengers called norepinephrine and epinephrine in her brain at the time of the alleged attack.
She said that these chemicals helped to encode memories in an area of the brain called the hippocampus, so that the main memory was "locked" while other details "kind of drifting".
Later, she said that the memory of Kavanaugh and another teenager who laughed during the assault was "indelible in the hippocampus".
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Memories are not very detailed records of events recovered with perfect accuracy. They are shaped by beliefs and expectations. For this reason, experts told the Associated Press last week that Ford and Kavanaugh, who deny any aggression, could firmly believe what they say.
Which one believes that his version more strongly is not a clue to what has really happened, say the experts.
"Trust is not a good guide to know if someone is telling the truth or not," said Nora Newcombe, a professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia. "If they think they're telling the truth, they both could trust themselves."
In a situation where a woman fears being raped by a man, her memories can be shaped by this fear into a memory that overestimates the threat, while the man might consider it "playing" and forget it, said David Rubin, professor. of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University.
And both people could be completely honest about their memories, he said.
Rubin noted the obvious fact that people can forget the things they did while intoxicated. But he said that the man in this scenario could forget the event even if he had been sober.
The memory and brain experts said Ford's quick tour of memory machines was generally correct. Elizabeth Phelps, a psychologist at Harvard University, says the levels of brain substances she cited increase when the person is alarmed and helps to fix memories in the hippocampus.
It helps people to remember the central parts of an emotional experience, while the details are usually lost, said Lila Davachi of Columbia University.
It is clear that the hippocampus is the key to the initial memory, but its role in long-term memory is the subject of debate, said Phelps. Various parts of the experience – sounds, images and thoughts – are perceived in different parts of the brain. And in the beginning, the seahorse serves as a sort of center for a canvas that brings these perceptions together as a memory, she said.
After years and consolidating memory, it is unclear whether the hippocampus continues to play this central role, or whether different parts of memory are connected by other means, she added.
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The Associated Press Department of Health and Science is supported by the Department of Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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