#9 11 memory pictures full#

The streets were closed around NYU and the campus shut down.

At the time, it would have been hard for us to work on anything else. My entire lab worked on the 9/11 project. And I think taking our survey was something that people thought would contribute to the greater good. Right after 9/11, people in New York really wanted to be around other people and to do things that were helpful. By September 18, we had survey tables in front of the NYU library and in Washington Square, and Bill had tables up around 14th Street, at the New School for Social Research. We got in touch with Bill Hirst, Marcia Johnson, Chandan Vaidya and other researchers who joined the consortium. John started putting the survey questionnaire together with Kevin Ochsner, a postdoc in his group. Then after a day or so, we decided to do it. We started talking about doing a study of 9/11, because every memory researcher knows about the classic studies of memories of the Challenger space shuttle explosion or the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. Phone service was hit or miss that day, but John Gabrieli, a friend and neuroscientist who was then at Stanford, managed to call me. How did the 9/11 memory project come about? So eventually I went home, watched CNN and ended up trying to go give blood. I went to his office, which looked out at the World Trade Center, and we saw one tower go down. There was nobody else in the office at that point, but one person. What was it like when you got to your lab the morning of 9/11?īy then, the second plane had hit the towers. New York University (NYU) is only two miles from the World Trade Center site. Phelps, a lead investigator of the survey.

Scientific American spoke with New York University psychologist Elizabeth A. Last month, the scientists did a 10-year follow-up survey-data yet to be analyzed-making the project the longest prospective study of how flashbulb memories change over time. The team surveyed more than 3,000 people in New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston, and four other cities in Connecticut, Missouri and California. How much can we trust, then, of what we remember of 9/11? Some answers are provided by a national study of 9/11 memories conducted by researchers at intervals of one week, one year and three years after the attack. These highly emotional recollections were dubbed 'flashbulb memories'-but the notion of photographic accuracy didn't bear out in later research. People can remember with great clarity what they were doing or to whom they were speaking when they learned of the crisis-whether via a sister's phone call or a first-hand glimpse of the World Trade Center on fire.ĭecades ago, psychologists theorized that the brain imprints such details into its memory, like a photograph, when we learn of sudden, tragic national events. These are the pictures we remember: wrenching, indelible photographs that tell the tale of a still-resonant late summer day that changed everything.Editor’s Note (9/11/18): Scientific American is re-posting the following article, originally published September 6, 2011, in light of the 17 th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.įor most Americans, as the nation's thoughts turn to the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, memories of that day readily come flooding back. Here, to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and in hopes of lending coherence to our shared, turbulent recollections, presents the 25 most stirring, visceral photographs from that day, featuring pictures from the likes of James Nachtwey, Joe Raedle, Spencer Platt, Mario Tama, and other celebrated photojournalists (and one intrepid amateur). But the fact that the deadliest, most visually arresting attacks occurred in New York City also meant that many of the world's best photographers were, in effect, already on the scene when the terrorists struck.

One decade after 9/11, an unsettling number of images from Ground Zero and its environs remain seared in our collective memory - unsurprising, perhaps, given the scope and scale of the destruction.

#9 11 memory pictures full#

Greg Semendinger)įor the full photo collection, go to 25 Most Powerful Photos1A photo taken on Septemby the New York City Police Department as the North Tower collapses, engulfing lower Manhattan in smoke and ash.