Taken from: I am - A blueprint for sentience by Krys Norman
We like to think that memories are snapshots of every event of our lives; a continuous stream of ever-increasing information that fills the memory banks. This may well be the case but consider some of the things brains don’t manage well at all. They can’t access all the original information accurately and the time details become increasingly vague. From the very second something is experienced and then becomes a memory, information starts to fade. Most is filtered out so that the consciousness does not even have to be distracted in real time. There is sometimes a dedicated memorising effort (with an emotional desire to do so) and very specific pieces of information can be remembered very accurately for a day or so. Generally, though, the brain is simply existing in the present and ignoring most of the information from the senses, let alone actively trying to remember every nuance. Within minutes the memory holds a thousandth of the original information, in hours, an millionth, days, a billionth. And so on. A decade later there is so little left of the actual facts in our heads that it becomes more of a mush of events and feelings.
Memories can also be considered to have a factual content and an emotional content that are quite distinct. Each occurring event has associations with the learned information of all previous events and generated beliefs. These can be grouped generally but very rapidly become highly complex. There is also a sense of time, possibly solar day and season orientated, that memories are also associated with. Linked to this is the emotional memory i.e. the emotions generated at each point in time. These come from the threats of loss or the potential for improved standards of existence and can be very strong, positive or negative, throughout the life of an individual. However, there can be many varied and less intense emotions also generated in this time. There is also much of an individual's life that has very little emotional content. These are the calm periods. The time on the toilet, waiting for a bus, tying shoelaces. The less the emotional content, the less the situations are remembered and there really is so much that has so little emotion in our lives. This is stored as a tiny subset of all the information gathered throughout all the events. So little of this is actually remembered. To our consciousness, though, there is a sense of continuity, albeit an ever more vague one, heading back to our early childhood. This is very reassuring but the accuracy or even existence of many memories is highly questionable. Instead of facts, there is a collection of subjective memories available for retrieval brought about from thought or stimulus. Memories can be viewed as possible past scenarios that are created to give the greatest overall positive reaction. As so many memories are entirely personal ones, even during simultaneous global events like 9/11, there is no corroboration required or available to remember exactly what any one person was doing at the time.
It might be more useful to see our memories as created rather than retrieved. On a desire to think about an event in the past, or a sensual trigger, a series of frames can be constructed based on the knowledge of what was likely to be around at the time as well as some snippets of specific facts. These need not be accurate if there is no evidence to the contrary and, generated with the memory, is the belief that that memory is accurate. The peripheral details are ignored, if not relevant. If really pressed there is very little to say how much is actually remembered or what is simple reconstructed with what feels right.
If this is a reasonable approximation to the processes of memory then they are still highly complex but nothing like the complexity of everything being stored. Essentially, much of what is remembered is what is wanted to be remembered. It is subjective choice not an objective retrieval. This lays the way to what and how this is done. If the memories can be created by choice then there can be parts of the brain that choose to amend the creation process. Within UMOE, the Primary Care Manager either amends the associations with a memory or even stops it from being accessed at all. It can also amend the belief that the memory recall process is accurate and that memory is gone. This will happen when the event in question contains either a strongly negative emotional content or it associates with a strong collection of previously generated emotional memories. It will protect the consciousness from experiencing it all again by both removing the facts and any question of fallibility. The painful memory is maybe not lost, though. The emotional content of all events is stored by the brain and can be retrieved through various techniques.