Why does my own brain lie to me?

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lostonearth35
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04 Mar 2022, 2:37 pm

My own brain creates false visual memories of things I thought I've seen. For example I'll read a comic book for thye first time but if I go read it again later I notice a lot of things I thought I saw in the comic were a lot different or didn't even exist.

This isn't all that unusual, because a lot of people are sure that the Fruit of the Loom logo has a cornucopia, which it does not. It has a red apple, some green grapes, some purple grapes, some yellow berries, and green leaves. But no cornucopia.

But why? Why would our own brains lie to us? I feel like it lies to me even more than most people, sometimes I can't tell if something is a real memory or an illusion, and I can't even trust my own brain in a world where we are all constantly being lied to. So much so that people think you're strange or even terrible for telling the truth. :(



Joe90
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04 Mar 2022, 2:42 pm

It's called The Mandela Effect. I get it too. It can be weird.


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Dillogic
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04 Mar 2022, 6:06 pm

Long-term memory fades and it tends to remember just the general picture, and the brain will fill in those small details that it's lost.

My brain tends to do it in the present, where it makes things seem better than what they are. Likely a coping mechanism with mine in this context, as the past is mostly darkness, and it needed to do it back then too. Artificial light is still light.



kraftiekortie
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04 Mar 2022, 6:09 pm

I don't believe your brain is "lying" to you.

It's more like you might get one impression at one moment, and a totally different one at another moment. This can arise from many causes.



blazingstar
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04 Mar 2022, 7:36 pm

Neurologists have shown that most of what we see is made up in our brains. Without interpretation by our brains, we would not be able to see, as the information coming from the eye doesn’t make sense.

Much of this is new research, but the one thing that has been known for long enough for me to have studied it, is there is a blind spot in each eye. The spot where the optic nerve enters the eye has no light sensitive cells.

We don’t see this blind spot because our brain fills in the spot with whatever is around it.

So, rather than lying to you, your brain is assisting you to make sense of the world.


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