system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How is an actual memory different from a memory of an imagination or fantasy?

For example, if a person is given a lie detector test and instead of focusing on his actual memory the person focuses on an alternate imaginative version of that memory. Will this person's body still react as though he is telling the truth or will it react like he is lying?
gpt
Lie detectors, atleast modern ones, do not determine whether your memories are correct or not but rather it's a form of pseudoscience of measuring how your body reacts to both external and internal stimuli.

An "actual" memory can be, in completely technicality, no different than a memory of an imagination or fantasy if you believe the latter mentioned to have truly occured. To add, we humans have extremely flawed capabilities of keeping memory since they change in detail (adding/removing/editing elements) each time we recall them, so in a way they always end up being imagination of how our brains perceived said events and later processes them in the future.

It all depends on how your brain categorizes said memories in the first place. An interesting fact is that this is why some frequent lucid dreamers can sometimes not tell apart their dreams from actual reality.

Background: Masters programme in Biomedical Engineering.

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