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Dr. Julia Shaw is a psychological scientist and senior researcher in the Department of Law and Social Science at London South Bank University. She teaches at the undergraduate and graduate level and her research on false memory has been published in several international academic journals. She returns to\xa0Point of Inquiry\xa0this week to discuss her new book, The Memory Illusion.

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Our memories are a collection of perceptions of our past experiences, and they influence what we think we\u2019re capable of in the future. Dr. Shaw argues that if we start to question the accuracy of our memories we\u2019re then forced to question the foundation of who we think we are. She shows us that our memories aren\u2019t as reliable as we think. Not only are we capable of co-opting other people\u2019s memories as our own, but we can also be easily persuaded by the power of suggestion that we\u2019ve committed acts that have never actually occurred. Even when it comes to our most confident recollections, the potential for memory error has proven to be profound, and Dr. Shaw believes understanding the science of memory can help us deal with our brains\u2019 tendency to rewrite the past.