What is Cryptomnesia?

Psychologists have long recognized the phenomenon cryptomnesia as occurring when someone believes an idea, for example, a melody, was originally their own but forgets where it actually came from. People often use cryptomnesia as a synonym for "unconscious plagiarism."

We often think of memories as just a pool of emotions and anecdotes we have experienced. But psychologists often divide those memories, in this context, into two kinds: item and source. Source memory is when people are able to remember where information came from, while item memory is when people just remember the information. Memory is often subjective: it changes as we experience new things or attach certain experiences to places.

This concept also challenges the way we think about creativity. For example, we are taught to read more books in order to write well. Many of our ideas are influenced by things we have previously seen or heard. The mind does not forget the information itself; instead, it forgets that the information was ever remembered.

So how can we operationalize a memory or know where it originally came from?

Modern use of fMRI can help us operationalize this, but we will never truly know where something actually came from. fMRI has been known to help with source monitoring, the investigation of how the brain identifies the origin of a memory, which showed patterns of brain activity associated with remembering whether information came from ourselves or from an outside source. Researchers then can compare brain activity when someone correctly remembers an idea as their own with activity when they mistakenly claim someone else’s idea as their own. However, fMRI cannot directly read a memory or prove its original source. So, we still have long ways to go until we are able to truly know whether a creative piece or product was created solely by the original creator.