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Daniel L. Schacter

Daniel L. Schacter is Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. His research has focused on psychological and biological aspects of human memory and amnesia, with a particular emphasis on the distinction between conscious and nonconscious forms of memory and, more recently, on brain mechanisms of memory distortion. He received his B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1974, M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1977 and 1981 respectively. His Ph.D. thesis was supervised by Endel Tulving. In 1978, he was a visiting researcher at the University of Oxford's Department of Experimental Psychology. He has also studied the effects of aging on memory. His research uses both cognitive testing and brain imaging techniques such as positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Schacter has written three books, edited seven volumes, and published over 200 scientific articles and chapters. Schacter publishes regularly in scientific journals. Among the topics that Schacter has investigated are: Alzheimer's Disease, the neuroscience of memory, age-related memory effects, and issues related to false memory. He is widely known for his integrative reviews, including his seminal review of implicit memory in 1987.


“Experiences that we remember intrusively, despite desperately wanting to banish them from our minds, are closely linked to, and sometimes threaten, our perceptions of who we are and who we would like to be.”
Daniel L. Schacter
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