Dr. David Eagleman

But it's sound, it's touch, it's things like that.

Why?

Because their occipital lobe at the back of their head is not visual.

It's coming from these other things.

So the dreaming circuitry, which is very ancient, is just blasting activity into that area of the occipital lobe.

And so they experience whatever that correlates with.

By the way, counselors who are at these who deal with these blind students at these blind schools, they're generally encouraged to blindfold themselves for like seven days and they absolutely start having totally different experiences.

Their brain starts, you know, changing.

Great question.

Well, it turns out, first of all,

What victims often have is what's called weapon focus.

So if the other person has a knife or a gun, that's all they remember.

Describe the guy's face.

I don't remember the guy's face because I was staring at the gun.

So it turns out that what they pay attention to is sort of the wrong thing for forensics purposes.

That's number one.

But number two is this much deeper issue that even amygdala memories are not necessarily accurate.

So our colleague Elizabeth Phelps –

did this experiment right after 9-11 in 2001.

Shortly after the event happened, she went and interviewed lots of people in downtown and midtown New York about what they saw on September 11th.