Recent brain research (HERE and HERE) has found a fold in the brain (in the paracingulate sulcus) that affects how well we can discriminate between real events and imagined events.
Participants were asked either to imagine the second name in a well-known duo (Laurel and ?) or to read the name pair read out loud (or listened as the experimenter read it) : "Laurel and Hardy." Then they were asked to recall whether they had imagined it or heard it. People with the PCS fold were significantly better at remembering.
"The researchers discovered that adults whose MRI scans indicated an absence of the PCS were significantly less accurate on memory tasks than people with a prominent PCS on at least one side of the brain. Interestingly, all participants believed that they had a good memory despite one group's memories being clearly less reliable."
It make me very curious about people who are very suggestible, such as Paul Ingram, and people who show the misinformation effect. The fold is one of the last parts of the brain to develop and is present in about 50% of the population. The 16% of participants in Elizabeth Loftus's research who remember seeing Bugs Bunny at Disney world...are they among the PS fold-free population?
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