How memory rewrites itself

Memory functions like a Wikipedia page that is edited every time a person recalls an event.

Using the word smashed instead of contacted increased eyewitness speed estimates by nine miles per hour.

Twenty-five percent of people developed rich false memories of being lost in a mall as children.

Eyewitness misidentification accounts for seventy percent of convictions later overturned by the Innocence Project.

Brain scans show that false memories activate the same retrieval centers as genuine recollections.

Post-identification feedback from law enforcement can falsely inflate a witness's confidence in their own memory.