Researchers from Northwestern Medicine have identified how the brain transforms our memories, Fox News reports.

"Our memory is not like a video camera," lead author Donna Jo Bridge, a postdoctoral fellow in medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine said in a press release. "Your memory reframes and edits events to create a story to fit your current world."

To investigate how memories change, researchers studied the memory recall of 17 men and women. Participants were asked to study a computer image with 168 objects against various desktop backgrounds. They then were asked to place the objects in their original locations but on a new background. Every time, participants failed to place the objects in their original spots.

Investigators then showed participants one object in three locations on one screen, asking them to identify the object’s position on the original screen. Participants consistently chose the incorrect location they identified initially.

"This shows their original memory of the location has changed to reflect the location they recalled on the new background screen. Their memory has updated the information by inserting the new information into the old memory,” Bridge said.