Remembering and the Brain: Can Brain Scans Detect Memories?

(October 23, 2009) Stanford Professor of psychology and neuroscience, Anthony Wagner PhD, discusses how the brain supports memory for everyday events, and will evaluate whether "mind reading" with brain imaging can detect when a person remembers the past and how this might be used as evidence in a court of law.

Includes a discussion of patient called "HM"; amnesia - real world versus hollywood; anterograde v retrograde; patient "EP"; role of the hippocampus; episodic memory; flash blub memory; subjective experience of reliving the past; brain imaging; lie detection; machine learning algorithms;

Link to India's novel use of brain scans - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/world/asia/15brainscan.html