Cute neuroscientist explains how false memories are created

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The fact that memories are so changeable has important implications for, among other things, the criminal justice system, Shaw pointed out—and that's the focus of much of her work. "In the lab, I convince people through memory hacking that they committed crimes that never happened," said Shaw, senior lecturer and researcher in the Department of Law and Social Sciences at London South Bank University. "I do it to show that the interrogation process can really distort memories, in consistent ways."

To implant a false memory, "you try to get someone to confuse their imagination with their memory," she said. "That's it: Get them to repeatedly picture it happening."

She'll start off by letting them know they committed a crime, and then claim to have insider information. For example: "Your parents told me that, when you were 14, you stole something, and the police were involved," she said, adding that she'll say she called the parents, and give details of their talk, "and then you believe me. You know I contacted your parents, and you trust them," she continued. That gives her credibility.

She'll keep going and layer in detail—the person's age, hometown, the name of their childhood best friend, and get them to repeatedly imagine the crime happening, over and over again, even if they never did it. Over the course of a couple of weeks, maybe even a shorter timespan than that, "it gets harder to decipher imagination, versus a memory coming back," Shaw said. "By the end, it's easy to think, this actually happened."

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