I am of the opinion that long term memories aren't exactly memories of actual events, but memories of memories. You remember somthing, you bring it into your consious mind and think about it for a while. Then, the next time something triggers that "same" memory, instead of remembering the original you remember what was in your head the last time you were thinking about the event. So instead of memories of events, we have memories of memories of memories of memories of events. And each time we re-remember, we color the facts with whatever else is going on in our heads at the time. And of course if we don't keep bringing old memories to mind they tend to decay away until we can no longer retrieve them at all. Kind of a lose-lose situation. It think I read this theory of memory somewhere, but honestly, I don't remember for sure.
Incidentally, my oldest memory is of a recurring nightmare I began having some time after my family moved out of the city just as I turned four. I dreamed of being crushed under dried leaves in a gutter alongside a road. As I was being crushed a strange machine would round the corner and head down the road after me. At the time I didn't know what in the world the strange machine was. A few years later though I was visiting the city and saw a street cleaning machine and it clicked--that was what was in my dream. So my dream contained something that I almost certainly had to have originally seen before I turned four. So here's the interesting question: since the experience of seing a street cleaner managed to stick inside my head, does it count as a memory, even though it took my subconsious to access it? Which is technically the oldest memory, the street cleaner or the nightmare?
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I am of the opinion that long term memories aren't exactly memories of actual events, but memories of memories. You remember somthing, you bring it into your consious mind and think about it for a while. Then, the next time something triggers that "same" memory, instead of remembering the original you remember what was in your head the last time you were thinking about the event. So instead of memories of events, we have memories of memories of memories of memories of events. And each time we re-remember, we color the facts with whatever else is going on in our heads at the time. And of course if we don't keep bringing old memories to mind they tend to decay away until we can no longer retrieve them at all. Kind of a lose-lose situation. It think I read this theory of memory somewhere, but honestly, I don't remember for sure. Incidentally, my oldest memory is of a recurring nightmare I began having some time after my family moved out of the city just as I turned four. I dreamed of being crushed under dried leaves in a gutter alongside a road. As I was being crushed a strange machine would round the corner and head down the road after me. At the time I didn't know what in the world the strange machine was. A few years later though I was visiting the city and saw a street cleaning machine and it clicked--that was what was in my dream. So my dream contained something that I almost certainly had to have originally seen before I turned four. So here's the interesting question: since the experience of seing a street cleaner managed to stick inside my head, does it count as a memory, even though it took my subconsious to access it? Which is technically the oldest memory, the street cleaner or the nightmare?