What Makes Us “Us”?

Understanding Autobiographical Memory

The issue of personal identity has been the concern of philosophers for centuries. These thoughts gave rise to a Cartesian concept called “soul”, an entity encompassing the mind and personality that uses the human body as a shell and can leave the body after death.

However, in the mid-17th century, John Locke came up with a theory that demolished the concept of the soul. In his book “Identity and Diversity: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, Locke (1689) explains that personal identity is found in consciousness through memory and not the substance of the soul or body. Today, perhaps we are familiar with the idea of how memory represents identity through an abstract idea in which the human brain is described as a computer machine that operates all other parts of the body and stores data.

Then this raises a new question:

“If our identity is formed from our accumulated memories and experiences, how much of us has been lost by forgotten memories?”

Understanding Autobiographical Memory

When we try to recall our childhood memories, maybe not many of us will be able to write down the details of the events. For example, we can’t remember when we were born, learn to speak, learn to walk, etc. This is because at that time we had not formed episodic memory, which is the memory of the details of everyday events which include time, location, emotions, and other contextual matters explicitly.

Scientists estimate that the earliest episodic memories don’t form around the age of three to seven. Tulving (1972), in his book “Elements of Episodic Memory”, was the first to propose this term to distinguish episodic memory from semantic memory (facts). According to Tulving, episodic memory is characterized by a sense of time (perception of time), connection to the self (self-perception), and autonoetic consciousness (the ability to place oneself in the past).

Quoted in Live Science, Zimmerman (2014) explains that this episodic memory formation process involves a separate brain system. The first step in this process is called “encoding,” a process that the brain goes through each time to form a new episodic memory. The next step is called “consolidation,” which basically translates the event into long-term memory. This process is what helps the memory become more firmly embedded so that it does not disappear over time.

However, the truth is our episodic memories are not always correct. There are many reasons why small mistakes might occur every time we remember past events, from what we believe or hope is true, what other people tell us about past events, to what we want the person to think. This has an impact on how we remember these memories in the future.

A study from Bielefeld University (2009) shows that we describe our memories differently every time we tell them to someone. This causes changes to the message and sometimes the memory itself. This phenomenon is known as the “audience tuning effect”.

As a result of this phenomenon, the episodic memory that we store over time will turn into autobiographical memory, which is a combined memory of semantic memory containing facts and episodic memory that has undergone several changes. This autobiographical memory is what ultimately shapes our identity.

So who are we? Of course, it’s not as simple as a collection of memories and past experiences. How we perceive our identity depends more on false memories, which change every time we try to remember them. In life, we often only live based on these labels we put.

Trivia 1: Writing life’s track record

Regardless of the accuracy, writing life’s track records through autobiographical memory can be an efficient way to get to know our identity more deeply. Through autobiographical writing, we can explore ourselves and determine significant things in our lives. Quoting from Socrates, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” In living life, we should not be trapped by the routines and ideas of other people’s lives, we have to find out what we really want because the life we ​​live is ours.

Trivia 2: Our memory may not be the only thing affecting our identity

In the book “The Biological Mind: How Brain, Body, and Environment Collaborate to Make Us Who We Are”, Jasanoff (2018), a professor of genetic engineering at MIT, explains that our memory is not the only thing that affects our identity. According to him, this “cerebral mystical” concept creates a false dichotomy between the brain and the body by ignoring the influence of limbs other than the brain on psychological conditions.

This is also supported by various medical records from organ transplant recipients reporting some changes in emotions and postoperative characteristics. Even so, studies on the relationship between identity and organs other than the brain are still incomplete and further research is needed to test its validity.

Reference List:

Hornigold, T. (2019). Are We Made of Memories? A Researcher’s Quest to Record His Life. Singularity Hub. https://www.google.com/amp/s/singularityhub.com/2018/12/09/are-we-made-of-memories-a-researchers-quest-to-record-his-life/amp/

Kopietz, et al. (2009). Audience-Congruent Biases in Eyewitness Memory and Judgment. Econtent Hogrefe, 40(3), 138–149. doi: 10.1027/1864–9335.40.3.138

Nimbalkar, N. (2010). John Locke on Personal Identity. NCBI. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3115296/

Worrall, S. (2018). Why the Brain-Body Connection Is More Important Than We Think. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/why-the-brain-body-connection-is-more-important-than-we-think/

Zimmerman, K.A. (2014). Episodic Memory: Definition and Examples. Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/43682-episodic-memory.html