How the mind forgets and remembers - Daniel L. Schacter

A
groundbreaking work by one of the world's foremost memory experts that offers
the first framework to explain the basic memory miscues that we all
encounter. 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.