This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science.

I'm Steve Mersky.

Christine Blasey Ford is a professor of psychology at Palo Alto University and a research

psychologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She reminded anyone

listening of her scientific qualifications on September 27th when she

testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

California Senator Diane Feinstein is the questioner.

You are very clear about the attack being pushed into the room, you say you don't know quite by whom, but that it was

Brett Kavanaugh that covered your mouth to prevent you from screaming and then you escaped. How are you so sure

that it was he? The same way that I'm sure that I'm talking to you right now is just basic memory functions

and also just the level of nor epinephrine and epinephrine in the brain that sort of as you know encodes

that neurotransmitter encodes memories into the hippocampus and so the trauma related experience then is kind of locked there

whereas other details kind of drift. So what you were telling us is this could not

be a case of mistaken identity? Absolutely not.