PBS Professor Steve Ramirez on ‘Unlocking the Power of Our Emotional Memory’
PBS Professor Steve Ramirez’s research was recently profiled in The Brink:
“Memory is less of a video recording of the past, and more reconstructive,” says Ramirez, a BU College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences. The malleable nature of memory is both a blessing and curse: it’s bad if we remember false details, but it’s good that our brains have the natural ability to mold and update memories to make them less potent, especially if it is something scary or traumatic.
So, what if it’s possible to use the malleable nature of our memories to our advantage, as a way to cure mental health disorders like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)? That is exactly what Ramirez and his research team are working to do. And after years of studying memory in mice, they’ve found not only where the brain stores positive and negative memories, but also how to turn the volume down on negative memories by artificially stimulating other, happier ones.