Julia Shaw

So the first thing that's important is for people to understand that they are capable of creating these false memories and that they're not this really unusual, hard to generate thing, that they're actually a normal memory process.

And that insight is why I wrote the memory illusion is because I think people need to just understand that their minds work like this and that they're really glitchy when it comes to the accuracy of their autobiographical memories.

But again, that that's probably ultimately a good thing as well in terms of our overall human experience.

But then what happens if you do have an important piece of information that's important to not being distorted, right?

You are a witness of a crime, for example, and you now know that this is going to be important.

What do you do?

And the really simple answer is don't trust your brain.

Just make sure you write it down.

Assume you are going to forget everything.

Assume you're going to forget no matter how important, how emotional, how intense, how much you say to yourself.

This is a failure of prospective memory, it's called.

I will remember.

You won't.

Just assume that you're not going to remember.

And the closer you get to the time at which an event happened, and we call this contemporaneous evidence.

The closer you get in time, the more high quality that memory is going to be.

And I think there's this myth sometimes that like if you're drunk or if you're high or if you're really emotional, that that's somehow you should wait.

You should sort of like go home, sleep it off, and then recall your memory.

That is not what the current advice in memory research actually says.

It's in the moment as soon as possible, write it down, record it outside your brain.