To retrochromaticize is to color events of the past with the sentiments of the present. In casual conversation, rechrome is an acceptable substitute.
As an example, if you had enjoyable times with a person, then experienced a falling out and looked back on all the good as now bad, you would be retrochromaticizing the relationship.
The brain is good at diminishing the intensity of pain memories, e.g. childbirth. This is an example of retrochromaticization, or rechroming, where perhaps the body's innate desire to reproduce rechromes the pain memory associated with prior reproduction.
I know this combines a Latin and a Greek root, but I tried both retrocolorize and anachromaticize, and neither of those had the same bite.
I think this is a continual process. Memory experts tell us that memories are actually bits and pieces of data stored in a variety of locations in the brain. Each of these locations is constantly evolving and being informed by new experiences and new data. Each time we access a memory, the brain tries to pull together the memory's disparate parts, but experts say that only a portion of the total parts are successfully retrieved, and it isn't necessarily the same parts each time. Our brain then works to fill in the gaps. The parts of the reconstructed memory then disperse to various storage locations, changing the memory in storage.
ReplyDeleteNo memory is static because each time we access it, we view it through the lens of our current understanding, which is necessarily different than when the memory was first formed. Plus, we fill in the retrieval gaps from our current thinking, not from how we were thinking when the memory was formed or even what we were thinking the last time we accessed the memory.