Professor Schacter's research uses both cognitive testing and brain imaging techniques such as
positron emission tomography and
functional magnetic resonance imaging. 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 and the story of memory. (2001); and
The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers (2001). In
The Seven Sins of Memory: 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, the
neuroscience of memory, age-related memory effects, issues related to
false memory, and memory and simulation. He is widely known for his integrative reviews, including his seminal review of
implicit memory in 1987. In 2012 he said in an interview to the
American Psychologist journal that our brain is like a
time machine, or to be precise, it works as a
virtual reality simulator. He also said that our brain can imagine the
future but it has difficulty in retracing the past. He has been the first author on multiple editions of the textbooks
Psychology and
Introducing Psychology, both having six editions as of 2023. ==Honors and awards==