Daniel Lawrence Schacter (born June 17, 1952) is an American

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...

. He is a

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

of Psychology at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. His research has focused on psychological and biological aspects of human

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, ...

and

amnesia Amnesia is a deficit in memory caused by brain damage or disease,Gazzaniga, M., Ivry, R., & Mangun, G. (2009) Cognitive Neuroscience: The biology of the mind. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. but it can also be caused temporarily by the use ...

, with a particular emphasis on the distinction between conscious and nonconscious forms of memory and, more recently, on brain mechanisms of memory and brain distortion, and memory and future simulation.

Early life

Schacter received his B.A. from the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...

in 1974, M.A. and Ph.D. from the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

in 1977 and 1981 respectively. His Ph.D. thesis was supervised by

Endel Tulving Endel Tulving (born May 26, 1927) is an Estonian-born Canadian experimental psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist. In his research on human memory he proposed the distinction between semantic and episodic memory. Tulving is a professor emerit ...

. In 1978, he was a visiting researcher at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

's Department of Experimental Psychology. He has also studied the effects of aging on memory.

Research

Professor Schacter's research uses both cognitive testing and brain imaging techniques such as positron emission tomography and

functional magnetic resonance imaging Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area o ...

. Schacter has written three books, edited seven volumes, and published over 200 scientific articles and chapters. His books include: ''Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past'' (1996); ''Forgotten ideas, neglected pioneers:

Richard Semon Richard Wolfgang Semon (22 August 1859, in Berlin – 27 December 1918, in Munich) was a German zoologist, explorer, evolutionary biologist, a memory researcher who believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics and applied this to social ...

and the story of memory.'' (2001); ''The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers'' (2001). In ''

The Seven Sins of Memory ''The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers'' is a book by Daniel Schacter, former chair of Harvard University's Psychology Department and a leading memory researcher. The book revolves around the theory that "the seven sins ...

: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers'', Schacter identifies seven ways ("sins") that memory can fail us. The seven sins are: Transience, Absent-Mindedness, Blocking, Misattribution, Suggestibility, Persistence, and Bias. In addition to his books, Schacter publishes regularly in scientific journals. Among the topics that Schacter has investigated are:

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...

, the

neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...

of memory, age-related memory effects, issues related to

false memory In psychology, a false memory is a phenomenon where someone recalls something that did not happen or recalls it differently from the way it actually happened. Suggestibility, activation of associated information, the incorporation of misinformat ...

, and memory and simulation. He is widely known for his integrative reviews, including his seminal review of

implicit memory In psychology, implicit memory is one of the two main types of long-term human memory. It is acquired and used unconsciously, and can affect thoughts and behaviours. One of its most common forms is procedural memory, which allows people to perfo ...

in 1987. In 2012 he said in an interview to the

American Psychologist ''American Psychologist'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Psychological Association. The journal publishes articles of broad interest to psychologists, including empirical reports and scholarly reviews covering science ...

journal that our brain is like a

time machine Time travel is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine. Time travel is a w ...

, or to be precise, it works as a

virtual reality simulator Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educa ...

. He also said that our brain can imagine the

future The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently ...

but it has difficulty in retracing the past.

Honors and awards

He was elected a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

in 1996. In 2005 Schacter received the

NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing The NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "to recognize authors whose reviews have synthesized extensive and difficult material, rendering a significant service to science and influencing the course ...

from the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

. He was elected to membership in NAS in 2013.

Representative Publications

*Buckner, R. L., Andrews‐Hanna, J. R., & Schacter, D. L. (2008). The brain's default network. ''Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences'', ''1124''(1), 1-38. *Schacter, D. L. (1992). Priming and multiple memory systems: Perceptual mechanisms of implicit memory. ''Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience'', ''4''(3), 244–256. *Schacter, D. L. (2008). ''Searching for memory: The brain, the mind, and the past''. Basic Books. *Schacter, D. L., Addis, D. R., & Buckner, R. L. (2007). Remembering the past to imagine the future: the prospective brain. ''Nature Reviews Neuroscience'', ''8''(9), 657–661. *Schacter, D. L., & Graf, P. (1986). Effects of Elaborative Processing on Implicit and Explicit Memory for New Associations. ''Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition'', ''12''(3), 432–444. *Tulving, E., & Schacter, D. L. (1990). Priming and human memory systems. ''Science'', ''247''(4940), 301–306.

References

External links

Schacter Memory Lab
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schacter, Daniel 1952 births Living people People from Scarsdale, New York 20th-century American psychologists American cognitive neuroscientists Memory researchers Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni University of Toronto alumni University of Toronto faculty University of Arizona faculty Harvard University faculty Scarsdale High School alumni Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences 21st-century American psychologists