Memory is such an interesting concept and Pixar’s Inside Out does a pretty good job portraying memory. In the movie, we follow the five key emotions of Riley, an 11-year-old girl who moves to a different state. This movie deals with various topics but I like to discuss how the movie portrayal of memory can be accurate but also have some flaws. An article by the Washington Post describes how the brain of Inside Out works. The emotions in the movie shape most of the memories in the film. An example would be how Joy, the main emotion in charge, forms a memory of Riley winning a game. Soon all these memories would form facets of Riley’s personality. Since Riley is a preteen, emotions handle a lot of control when it comes to creating memories and even our own personalities. Director of the movie, Pete Docter, explains how before he consulted psychologists to make the film a bit more accurate. Children’s brains are still developing and for Riley, her prefrontal cortex is still forming. For the film, what they got right is how the memories are important and how they can be created. What the movie fails to get right is that memories are much more complex than spheres. In an article written by a neuroscientist, Dr. Blake Porter, he analyzes the film more in depth and has found some inaccuracies. One of his claims is “In the name of story telling I can understand depicting memories as nice clean spheres. However, in the brain memories are not this nice. An entire memory, especially an episodic memory, involves many neurons across many brain regions all activating in a coordinated way. Researchers often call the physical representation of a memory an Engram. That is, all the cells and cell processes involved in a particular memory. We also know that the brain circuits that make up specific memories are very intermixed with other memories that share similar events” (Blake Porter, Inside Out’s Take on the Brain: A Neuroscientist’s …” He basically explains how memories are should be more complex compared to just orbs. While Inside Out has some inaccurate concepts on memory and how it forms the self, it’s a cute movie that handles a lot of neuroscience topics in a creative way.
Sources:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2015/08/30/inside-out-science/#3ecedd1a5184
https://www.blakeporterneuro.com/inside-outs-take-on-the-brain-a-neuroscientists-perspective/