Introduction: what are false memories? Have you ever specifically remembered an event like going to a basketball game and then someone reminded you that you didn't go because you were sick or something. If so, you have created a false memory. The study of false memories began in the early 1990s, when people began reporting “recovered” memories of abuse (Laney & Loftus 1). To understand how false memories work, you must first have a basic understanding of how memory works. In general your brain stores memories in different ways depending on what type of memory they are. For example, short-term memories are often stored in acoustic form, but long-term memories are stored based on their meaning (Foster 3). For this reason, long-term memory is more prone to errors. In order to convert your short-term memories into long-term memories, you use the diencephalon and hippocampus regions in the brain (Foster 3). This process is the reason you are able to create and store your long-term memories. Removing one of the hippocampi will not have much effect, but if you remove both you may end up not being able to create new long-term memories (Ornstein and Thompson 136). On the other hand, memories are eventually forgotten because the brain can only hold onto a certain number of things (Thean 1). This understanding will help you better understand the creation of false memories. False memories are simply the memory of events that you believe happened when they actually did not happen. There are many ways that scientists believe false memories are created. Some scientists conclude that each time you access your memory you rewrite it slightly differently, so it will never be a completely exact summary of the events that people... middle of paper...." Technology Review 116.4 (2013 ): 48. MasterFILE Premier. Web, 2 February 2014. .Laney, Cara and Elizabeth F. Loftus “Recent Advances in False Memory Research.” South African Journal Of Psychology 43.2 (2013): 137-146. January 15, 2014. .Loftus, Elizabeth F. "Creating False Memories" 277.3 (1997): 70. MAS Ultra - School Web Edition, February 18, 2014. Ornstein, Robert and Richard F. Thompson The Amazing Brain Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1984. Thean, Tara, You Don't. Study Shows False Memories Plague Us All. November 11, 2013. Time Science and Space. Web. January 21, 2014. .Trafton, Anne. “Neuroscientists plant false memories in the brain.” MIT Press Office, July 25, 2013. MIT News, February 15 2014. .