Long-term memories must be literally built into the neural synapses in our brains. To overly simplify the science behind it, our memories are formed by the activation and tweaking of tiny subsets of neurons in our brain and the messages they send to form short-term and long-term memories. We become so confident in our recollections that we don’t question them. These fabricated twists of our memory are quite often widespread. If you are now googling the answers to some of these memories and find that you have indeed misremembered, know that you are not alone. Where is the curl on the Coca-Cola logo? Does Curious George have a tail or not? Does Pikachu have a black-tipped tail? Is it The Flinstones or The Flintstones? Did the character Ilsa in Casablanca really say those iconic words, “Play it again, Sam” or if you remember correctly, did she actually say, “Play it once, Sam. In addition, the internet phenomenon of the Visual Mandela Effect can make you greatly question just how reliable your memory is. Paranormal researcher, Fiona Broome, coined the phrase the Mandela Effect when she detailed her misremembered recollection of Nelson Mandela dying in prison in 1980 when in fact, he was very much alive at the timeĮssentially the Mandela Effect is concerned with the manifestation of false memories, the falsification of existing memories, and the confused recollection of events often on a widespread scale.

What psychologists and researchers of the Mandela Effect have considered is that it is more akin to the concept of Deja vú or the distortion of memory. Others have also linked this memory concept to conspiracies such as the vastness of the concept of the manipulation of memory. The Mandela Effect became synonymous with the theory that a group of people can misremember the same thing with the same level of detail.įor those intrigued by these nuances of memory, the Mandela Effect has also been attributed to the idea of the multiverse whereby there is an understanding that every universe includes parallel and alternate realities. What Broome uncovered was that many people shared her false memory. Paranormal researcher, Fiona Broome, coined the phrase the Mandela Effect when she detailed her misremembered recollection of Nelson Mandela dying in prison in 1980 when in fact, he was very much alive at the time and released from prison in 1990.

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