• children witness
• criminal law
• criminal procedure
• diritto penale
• memoria
• memory
• minori
• neuroscientific evidence
• neuroscienze
• procedura penale
• prova dichiarativa
• testimonianza

This thesis aims to shed some light on the legal, ethical, and epistemological implications of introducing neuroscientific knowledge on human memory into criminal trials, focusing on the testimony of minors, in order to understand how the rules of criminal procedure should adapt to the new discoveries in the fields of cognition, memory and psychology of trauma. It first outlines current scientific understanding of memory, describing investigative techniques (EEG, PET, fMRI) and data-processing tools, including AI. Key research topics include distinguishing true from false memories, susceptibility to suggestion, detecting deception, identifying memory traces, and the impact of neurological or psychological conditions. Above all, special attention is given to recent studies on child memory—its development, vulnerability to false memories, and neuro-evidence of trauma — highlighting their potential relevance in assessing the reliability of child witnesses in sensitive cases such as sexual abuse or domestic maltreatment.