panel of judges

Jessica Payne had seen and read much about false memories. In particular, she had read about witnesses to violent crimes who misidentified the perpetrators. But as a graduate student of neuroscience at the University of Arizona, she was shocked to discover that there was almost no research on the effect of stress in creating such memories. Payne decided to study the phenomenon herself, and her research strongly suggests that stress can alter memories by messing with the way they are consolidated.