False Memory Syndrome and the Diencephalic Code: Decoding “The Memory That Never Was” through Psychextrics
BY: OMOLAJA MAKINEE
“What if the memories we question are not mistakes—but messages?”
Memory, in its familiar psychological framing, is often treated as a factual archive — a linear retrieval of stored experiences, as though the brain were a filing cabinet of the past. Yet under the science of Psychextrics, this assumption is overturned. Memory is not a passive retrieval but an active encoding, continuously filtered, reconstructed, and emotionally weighted through the ceaseless operations of the diencephalon network.
This network, nestled deep within the brain’s architecture, does not merely record what happens — it interprets, recomposes, and projects meaning. It is the subconscious scriptwriter of the human narrative, while the cortex merely serves as the display screen upon which the self perceives the story.
In “The Memory That Never Was: False Memory Syndrome in Psychextrics Perspective,” we journey beyond pathology to reimagine false memory as an evolutionary mechanism — a cognitive and emotional process through which the diencephalon preserves symbolic truths even when factual precision dissolves.
1. The Diencephalon: The Subconscious Engine of Meaning
The diencephalon — comprising the thalamus, hypothalamus, subthalamus, and epithalamus — operates as the central hub of subconscious life. Long before we are aware, this network continuously receives, sorts, and translates information from both external stimuli and internal states. It mediates between instinct and emotion, between perception and identity.
In Psychextrics, this ceaseless encoding is understood as the foundation of emotional memory construction. The diencephalon does not store memory itself — that is the function of the hippocampus — but it defines how memory is encoded: how sensory data, emotional charge, and interpretive meaning are fused into a coherent narrative of the self.
The diencephalon acts as the subconscious editor of the human biography — determining not what we remember, but how we feel about what we remember.
2. The Hippocampus: The Library, Not the Author
Conventional neuroscience credits the hippocampus as the centre of memory. Yet in Psychextrics, it is seen instead as the library — not the author. The hippocampus stores the scripts written by the diencephalon, but it lacks the agency to reconstruct meaning independently.
Every recalled event — whether accurate, embellished, or false — is the by-product of how the diencephalon encoded that experience, both at the time of perception and at later subconscious states. When we recall, we are not replaying a recording; we are reading a reinterpreted script. The hippocampus opens the page, but the narrative ink is of diencephalic origin.
This explains why memory is emotionally malleable — why trauma can distort recall, why hypnosis can fabricate vivid falsehoods, and why imagination can masquerade as experience. What we call “false memory” is not a malfunction but an emotional reconstruction consistent with the diencephalon’s internal logic.
3. The Cortex: The Display Window of Consciousness
In Psychextrics, the cortex is the display window of consciousness — a stage upon which the diencephalon’s internal operations are made visible. It does not generate meaning; it receives it. When a thought, image, or sensation enters conscious awareness, it has already been filtered, formatted, and emotionally weighted by the diencephalon.
This is why two people can experience the same event but recall it with radically different emotional tones. Their cortical awareness displays different outputs because their diencephalic encoding systems — their HIM (Hormonal Index Marker) and HFI (Hormonal Fluidity Index) — interpret reality through distinct emotional architectures.
4. False Memory as a Diencephalic Phenomenon
False Memory Syndrome (FMS) arises when the encoding process within the diencephalon is altered — either genetically (GIM – Genetic Index Marker) or epigenetically (EIM – Epigenetic Index Marker). In these instances, the emotional and perceptual circuits become misaligned, leading to memories that feel real because they carry authentic emotional signatures, even when the factual correlates are absent.
This is why FMS cannot be cured by rational correction alone. The cortex is merely the messenger and have no way of “knowing” the memory is false, but the diencephalon that displays it in the cortex feels it as true. Emotional truth always overrides factual logic at the subconscious level.
This same mechanism explains dream realism — why dreams evoke authentic emotional experiences despite lacking external grounding. The diencephalon’s language is emotion, not evidence.
5. HIM, HFI, and the Emotional Architecture of Memory
Every individual possesses a unique HIM/HFI architecture, a hormonal and emotional blueprint shaping how memory is encoded and re-experienced through behaviour.
- HIM (Hormonal Index Marker) defines the stable, inherited emotional constants of an individual — the baseline signature of how the diencephalon assigns meaning.
- HFI (Hormonal Fluidity Index) represents adaptive modulation — the epigenetic elasticity allowing environmental stimuli, diet, drugs, or trauma to influence encoding.
When trauma, ingestion, or environmental stress modulates HFI, it temporarily alters how the diencephalon encodes reality. Under such conditions, false or embellished memories may form — not as errors, but as attempts by the subconscious to restore internal coherence between perception and emotion.
Thus, memory distortion becomes a healing function — a subconscious correction to unbearable emotional dissonance.
6. The Sleep Cycle and Subconscious Encoding
Even during sleep, the diencephalon remains active, encoding, revising, and reconciling memories accumulated through waking consciousness. This explains why dreams integrate fragments of the day’s experiences with entirely fictional constructs — they are diencephalic replays, emotional rehearsals meant to stabilise the psyche.
The cortex rests because it consumes more neural bandwidth, but the diencephalon continues its quiet symphony of meaning-making. This perpetual operation forms the biological basis for what Psychextrics terms the subconscious continuum — the uninterrupted narrative production of the self.
7. Why the Cortex Misreads the Past
When memory retrieval malfunctions, it is not always because false data was stored in the hippocampus but because the diencephalon may re-encodes it during recall. Each recall is a rewrite, influenced by current emotional and hormonal states.
This means memory is a living document, continuously revised to maintain psychological coherence. FMS arises when this process becomes overactive — when meaning overwrites fact entirely, and emotional necessity replaces perceptual truth.
Such cases illuminate the profound insight of Psychextrics: the brain does not seek truth. It seeks balance — a harmony between the self’s internal emotional architecture and the external world of experience.
8. Implications: Beyond Pathology
From the psychextrical perspective, False Memory Syndrome is not purely pathological. It is a communication from the subconscious — a message encrypted in emotional logic. In some, this manifests as trauma; in others, as artistic genius. The same neural mechanism that distorts reality in one mind may produce visionary creativity in another.
This explains the historical link between neurodivergence, high-functioning autism, and exceptional memory recall. These conditions represent variations in diencephalic encoding bandwidth — either heightened or atypical — producing extraordinary perceptual detail or confabulatory imagination.
9. Toward Brain Decoding and the Future of Psychextrics
Emerging neurotechnologies such as brain decoding scanners will eventually map how the diencephalon encodes and reconstructs behaviour, emotion, and memory. By tracking HIM and HFI patterns in real time, these tools could identify how false memories form — not as mental disorders, but as adaptive subconscious computations.
Such understanding could transform not only psychiatry and law but art, education, and moral philosophy — for to know how memory constructs meaning is to know how reality itself is negotiated within the human brain.
10. Conclusion: The Memory That Never Was
“The Memory That Never Was” invites us to see memory not as a vault of the past, but as a living organism — one that evolves, adapts, and sometimes imagines in order to heal. In Psychextrics, false memory is not the failure of truth, but the persistence of meaning — the diencephalon’s refusal to forget what emotion deems necessary to remember.
For memory is not only about what happened, but about what the self must believe happened in order to remain whole.
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