  Conspiracy theories, or in general seriously distorted beliefs, are
widespread. How and why are they formed in the brain is still more a matter of
speculation rather than science. In this paper one plausible mechanisms is
investigated: rapid freezing of high neuroplasticity (RFHN). Emotional arousal
increases neuroplasticity and leads to creation of new pathways spreading
neural activation. Using the language of neurodynamics a meme is defined as
quasi-stable associative memory attractor state. Depending on the temporal
characteristics of the incoming information and the plasticity of the network,
memory may self-organize creating memes with large attractor basins, linking
many unrelated input patterns. Memes with fake rich associations distort
relations between memory states. Simulations of various neural network models
trained with competitive Hebbian learning (CHL) on stationary and
non-stationary data lead to the same conclusion: short learning with high
plasticity followed by rapid decrease of plasticity leads to memes with large
attraction basins, distorting input pattern representations in associative
memory. Such system-level models may be used to understand creation of
distorted beliefs and formation of conspiracy memes, understood as strong
attractor states of the neurodynamics.
