Julia Shaw

Saying things and your role as a therapist is to help them manage their emotions now and to feel better.

And that's the other thing is that they have a very different role than I do.

The therapist is trying to manage the person's well-being now.

Whereas I am looking at the evidentiary quality.

That is a complete, I'm almost like, not quite the other side, but I'm in a very different role.

Well, I'm criticizing slash analyzing their memories, whereas the others, the therapists, are more likely to be trying to help them manage the memories in their day-to-day life.

And so it doesn't matter if they're true or not to therapists.

What matters is that they're troubling to the people themselves.

But once you get into a courtroom setting, as you say, the facts and what actually happened matter.

And it's not just what you remember.

It's what actually happened.

Well, the essence of that is right.

There is something called state dependent memory, which is that you're more likely to remember things that were consolidated or created as memories if they match the state that you're in now.

So if you are sad now...

and your brain's sort of just going, you're more likely to remember other sad times.

Because your memory and the emotional state of your brain is basically already activating those networks of sadness.

And it's like, here's some other sad things and shitty things that happened to you.

And it's the same with if you're embarrassed.

That's the sort of classic one that we usually use as memory researchers.

is that moment where you do something embarrassing.