Chapter 1
The lying eye and how optical illusions hack your sight
Chapter 2
The rewrite machine and why memory is a puzzle
Chapter 3
Blind spots and the shortcuts your brain takes to save energy
Chapter 4
Cultural lenses and how background shapes what we see
Ch 2 · The rewrite machine and why memory is a puzzle
artiteacher Memory Reconsolidation Science
We don't press play, we rewrite the file.
BETA
artiteacher Decode tricky illusions to learn how your brain distorts what you see and remember.
artiteacher In a 1974 study, asking if cars smashed instead of hit altered speed estimates and made eyewitnesses falsely recall broken glass.
Quiz
Which psychologist led the famous 1974 'car crash' study on how eyewitness testimony can be easily manipulated?
Quiz
What is the psychological term for the phenomenon where misleading information presented after an event alters a person's memory of it?
artiteacher Brains distort emotional flashbulb memories even when we feel 100% confident.
Quiz
Which major 1986 space tragedy did psychologist Ulric Neisser use to study the accuracy of highly emotional 'flashbulb' memories?
Quiz
In Ulric Neisser's study on the Challenger disaster, what percentage of participants gave completely different accounts of their experience years later?
Fun Fact
The forgetting curve: Within just one hour of learning new information, the average human brain completely forgets about fifty percent of it unless it is reviewed.
Quiz
Approximately what percentage of participants in the original 1995 'lost in the mall' study came to fully or partially believe the false memory?
Quiz
What is the name of the famous psychological technique developed in 1995 to implant false childhood memories in a lab setting?
Glossary
reconsolidation (noun)
The neurobiological process in which stored memories become temporarily unstable and open to modification upon retrieval. In 2000, neuroscientist Karim Nader demonstrated this phenomenon by disrupting reactivated fear memories in rats.
The neurobiological process in which stored memories become temporarily unstable and open to modification upon retrieval. In 2000, neuroscientist Karim Nader demonstrated this phenomenon by disrupting reactivated fear memories in rats.
Quiz
Who coined the term 'Mandela Effect' in 2009 after discovering widespread shared false memories?