Are memories permanent and unalterable?
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Are memories permanent and unalterable? There has been a large debate over the recent years on whether information stored in long-term memory is permanent and unalterable. There are many people who agree with this assumption either because of personal experiences or scientific findings supporting it. An obvious example would be the sort of cued recall that occurs in contextual situations. Details of a place visited might not be remembered until a time of revisiting, or instances where experiences during school life might have been forgotten and a photograph of a classmate might trigger memories. Also there are several occasions where certain smells evoke certain memories. Several studies over the years indicated that memories become less available as the interval increases between the time of the information's initial acquisition and the time of its attempted retrieval. This phenomenon is named 'forgetting' (Loftus 1980). Despite the agreement on the existence...

