Daniel L. Schacter – författare

This volume provides, for the first time, multidisciplinary perspectives on the problem of awareness of deficits following brain injury. Such deficits may involve perception, attention, memory, language, or motor functions, and they can seriously disrupt an individual's ability to function. However, some brain-damaged patients are entirely unaware of the existence of their deficits, even when they are severe and easily noticed by others. In addressing these topics, contributors cover the entire range of neuropsychological syndromes in which problems with awareness of deficit are observed: hemiplegia and hemianopia, amnesia, aphasia, traumatic head injury, dementia, and others. On the clinical side, leading researchers delineate the implications of awareness of deficits for rehabilitation and patient management, and the role of defence mechanisms such as denial. Theoretical discussions focus on the importance of awareness disturbances for better understanding such cognitive processes as attention, consciousness, and monitoring.

This volume provides, for the first time, multidisciplinary perspectives on the problem of awareness of deficits following brain injury. Such deficits may involve perception, attention, memory, language, or motor functions, and they can seriously disrupt an individual''s ability to function. However, some brain-damaged patients are entirely unaware of the existence or severity of their deficits, even when they are easily noticed by others. In addressing these topics, contributors cover the entire range of neuropsychological syndromes in which problems with awareness of deficit are observed: hemiplegia and hemianopia, amnesia, aphasia, traumatic head injury, dementia, and others. On the clinical side, leading researchers delineate the implications of awareness of deficits for rehabilitation and patient management, and the role of defense mechanisms such as denial. Theoretical discussions focus on the importance of awareness disturbances for better understanding such cognitive processes as attention, consciousness, and monitoring.

Daniel L. Schacter, chairman of Harvard University''s Psychology Department, is internationally recognised as one of the world''s authorities on memory, explains that just as the seven deadly sins, the seven memory sins appear routinely in everyday life, and why it is a good thing that they happen and surprisingly vital to a keen mind. The author explains how transience reflects a weakening of memory over time, how absent-mindedness occurs when failures of attention sabotage memory and how blocking happens when we can''t retrieve a name we know well. Three other sins involve distorted memories: misattribution (assigning a memory to the wrong source), suggestibility (implanting false memories), and bias (rewriting the past based on present beliefs). The seventh sin, persistence, concerns intrusive recollections that we cannot forget - even when we wish we could. Daniel Schacter illustrates decades of research into memory lapses with compelling, and often bizarre, examples - for example, the violinist who placed a priceless Stradivarius on top of his car before driving off and the national memory champion who was plagued by absentmindedness. This book also explores recent research, such as the imaging of the brain that actually shows memories being formed. Together the stories and scientific findings examined in How The Mind Forgets and Remembers will reassure everyone from twenty-somethings who find their lives too busy to those in their fifties and sixties who are worried about early Alzheimers. Beautifully written, this original book provides a fascinating new look at our brains and what we more generally think of as our minds.

Memory. There may be nothing more important to human beings than our ability to enshrine experience and recall it. While philosophers and poets have elevated memory to an almost mystical level, psychologists have struggled to demystify it. Now, according to Daniel Schacter, one of the most distinguished memory researchers, the mysteries of memory are finally yielding to dramatic, even revolutionary, scientific breakthroughs. Schacter explains how and why it may change our understanding of everything from false memory to Alzheimer's disease, from recovered memory to amnesia with fascinating firsthand accounts of patients with striking,and sometimes bizarre,amnesias resulting from brain injury or psychological trauma.

The scientific research literature on memory is enormous. Yet until now no single book has focused on the complex interrelationships of memory and belief. This book brings together eminent scholars from neuroscience, cognitive psychology, literature, and medicine to discuss such provocative issues as “false memories,” in which people can develop vivid recollections of events that never happened; retrospective biases, in which memories of past experiences are influenced by one’s current beliefs; and implicit memory, or the way in which nonconscious influences of past experience shape current beliefs.Ranging from cognitive, neurological, and pathological perspectives on memory and belief, to relations between conscious and nonconscious mental processes, to memory and belief in autobiographical narratives, this book will be uniquely stimulating to scholars in several academic disciplines.

Hypnosis, confabulation, source amnesia, flashbulb memories, repression--these and numerous additional topics are explored in this timely collection of essays by eminent scholars in a range of disciplines. This is the first book on memory distortion to unite contributions from cognitive psychology, psychopathology, psychiatry, neurobiology, sociology, history, and religious studies. It brings the most relevant group of perspectives to bear on some key contemporary issues, including the value of eyewitness testimony and the accuracy of recovered memories of sexual abuse.The distinguished contributors to this volume explore the full range of biological phenomena and social ideas relevant to understanding memory distortion, including the reliability of children's recollections, the effects of hypnosis on memory, and confabulation in brain-injured patients. They also look into the activity and role of brain systems, cellular bases of memory distortion, and the effects of emotion and trauma on the accuracy of memory. In a section devoted to the social aspects of memory distortion, additional essays analyze the media's part in distorting social memory, factors influencing historical reconstruction of the collective past, and memory distortion in religion and other cultural constructs. Daniel Schacter launches the collection with a history of psychological memory distortions. Subsequent highlights include new empirical findings on memory retrieval by a pioneer in the field, some of the foremost research on computational models, studies of the relationship between emotion and memory, new findings on amnesia by a premier neuroscientist, and reflections on the power of collective amnesia in U.S. history, the Nazi Holocaust, and ancient Egypt.

Richard Semon was a German evolutionary biologist who wrote, during the first decade of the twentieth century, two fascinating analyses of the workings of human memory which were ahead of their time. Although these have been virtually unknown to modern researchers, Semon''s work has been rediscovered during the past two decades and has begun to have an influence on the field. This book not only examines Semon''s contribution to memory research, but also tells the story of an extraordinary life set against the background of a turbulent period in European history and major developments in science and evolutionary theory. The resulting book is an engaging blend of biographical, historical and psychological material.

Richard Semon was a German evolutionary biologist who wrote, during the first decade of the twentieth century, two fascinating analyses of the workings of human memory which were ahead of their time. Although these have been virtually unknown to modern researchers, Semon''s work has been rediscovered during the past two decades and has begun to have an influence on the field. This book not only examines Semon''s contribution to memory research, but also tells the story of an extraordinary life set against the background of a turbulent period in European history and major developments in science and evolutionary theory. The resulting book is an engaging blend of biographical, historical and psychological material.

Richard Semon was a German evolutionary biologist who wrote, during the first decade of the twentieth century, two fascinating analyses of the workings of human memory which were ahead of their time. Although these have been virtually unknown to modern researchers, Semon's work has been rediscovered during the past two decades and has begun to have an influence on the field. This book not only examines Semon's contribution to memory research, but also tells the story of an extraordinary life set against the background of a turbulent period in European history and major developments in science and evolutionary theory. The resulting book is an engaging blend of biographical, historical and psychological material.

People sometimes remember events that never happened. These illusory or false memories have important practical implications in various aspects of everyday life, and also have significant theoretical implications for cognitive and neuropsychological models of memory. Cognitive psychologists and neuropsychologists have long been aware of false recognition, confabulation, and related kinds of memory distortions, but during the past several years research on these topics has increased rapidly.In recognition of this emerging domain of interest, this special issue of Cognitive Neuropsychology is devoted to the cognitive neuropsychology of false memories. Edited by Daniel L. Schacter, the special issue features experimental and theoretical contributions from leading cognitive psychologists, neuropsychologists, and neurologists that explore such issues as false recognition after frontal lobe damage, the nature of confabulation, amnesia and false memories, physiological correlates of memory illusions, memory distortions in normal and abnormal aging, and computational models of true and false memories.

Richard Semon was a German evolutionary biologist who wrote, during the first decade of the twentieth century, two fascinating analyses of the workings of human memory which were ahead of their time. Although these have been virtually unknown to modern researchers, Semon's work has been rediscovered during the past two decades and has begun to have an influence on the field. This book not only examines Semon's contribution to memory research, but also tells the story of an extraordinary life set against the background of a turbulent period in European history and major developments in science and evolutionary theory. The resulting book is an engaging blend of biographical, historical and psychological material.