Telling the Truth About “False” Memory: ‘Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia
now can distinguish between true and “false” memories, which could lead to further discoveries about the human mind.

“Although people believe they remember events accurately, the human memory is error prone, creating memories of events that never happened,” said
(one of the researchers). “Learning how true and false memories differ will allow us to better understand how memory works
and fails, and how memories are stored and processed.”

“Memory retrieval involves the reactivation of sensory information present during an event…However, memories of events that never
occurred have no sensory information to reactivate. By detecting this brain activity, we can differentiate between true and false memories.” ‘ Although this research technique is not soon likely to become a clinically useful test, this has enormous implications for the polarizing and seemingly insoluble debate — kind of like arguing about religion — about the falsity or reality of “recovered memories” of early abuse (zealously defended and sometimes zealously encouraged by some therapists, and met with contempt by others) that has been ripping through the mental health field and the popular culture over the last decade. This link should take you to the abstract of the study in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.