On April 1st, 2011 the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences and the Stanford Interdisciplinary Group on Neuroscience and Society, with support from NeuroVentures, the Stanford Institute for Neuroinnovation and Translational Neuroscience, and Stanford Law School hosted a Law and Memory Conference. The conference brought together neuroscientists, law professors, and lawyers to explore how our rapidly improving understanding of human memory is likely to affect the law.
Law and Memory Talks
James McGaugh
(UC Irvine)
Creating Lasting Memories
Date: 01/04/2011
Description:
The presentation will summarize evidence that emotional arousal influences on memory involve release of stress hormones and subsequent noradrenergic activation of the amygdala. Such activation influences memory processing in neural systems that process memories, including the hippocampus. The highly superior autobiographical human memory will be discussed in the context of these findings.
Kevin LaBar
(Duke)
Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotional Memory
Date: 01/04/2011
Description:
Memories for emotional events constitute the core of our autobiographical record. Due to their personal and biological significance, it is likely that special mechanisms have evolved to link emotions to learning and memory functions in the brain. Advances in cognitive neuroscience and brain imaging have permitted an unprecedented opportunity to investigate how complex psychological processes interact in the healthy human brain. This lecture will summarize our current understanding of how dimensions of emotional experience modify memory formation and retrieval at the neural systems level.
Almut Hupbach
(Lehigh University)
Reconsolidation in Human Memory
Date: 01/04/2011
Description:
When memories are reactivated, they return to a plastic state in which they can be modified. Subsequently, those memories need to be restabilized (i.e., reconsolidated), as otherwise they may be irreversibly lost. Reconsolidation effects have been found in a variety of animal protocols, shedding light on the molecular mechanisms and behavioral consequences of the reconsolidation process. Much less is known about reconsolidation in human memory. In my talk, I will review recent studies on reconsolidation in fear conditioning, procedural, and episodic memory, which all demonstrate that human memories are subject to reactivation-dependent changes.
Anthony Wagner
(Stanford University)
Introduction to the Science of Memory
Date: 01/04/2011
Description:
This talk will provide a brief overview of memory systems, introducing central characteristics of different types of memory. A focus will be on episodic memory (memory for events) and how the episodic memory system differs, both functionally and neurobiologically, from other memory systems. The goal is to ground participants in key facts about memory, setting the stage for the day’s discussions about memory and law.