Can we edit the content of our memories? It's a sci-fi-tinged question that Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu are asking in their lab at MIT. Essentially, the pair shoot a laser beam into the brain of a living mouse to activate and manipulate its memory. In this unexpectedly amusing talk they share not only how, but -- more importantly -- why they do this. (Filmed at TEDxBoston.)
Steve Ramirez: Neuroscientist
When Steve Ramirez published his latest study in Science, it caused a media frenzy. Why? Because the paper was on implanting false memories in the brains of mice.Steve is a graduate student at MIT’s Brain and Cognitive Sciences department pursuing a Ph.D. in neuroscience. His work focuses on finding where single memories are located throughout the brain, genetically tricking the brain cells that house these memories to respond to brief pulses of light, and then using these same flickers of light to reactivate, erase and implant memories. The goals of his research are twofold: to figure out how the brain gives rise to the seemingly ephemeral process of memory, and to predict what happens when specific brain pieces breakdown to impair cognition. His work has been published in Science and covered by New Scientist, Discover, Scientific American, and Gizmodo.
Ramirez aims to be a professor who runs a lab that plucks questions from the tree of science fiction to ground them in experimental reality. He believes that a team-oriented approach to science makes research and teaching far more exciting. When he’s not tinkering with memories in the lab, Ramirez also enjoys running and cheering on every sports team in the city of Boston.
Xu Liu: Neuroscientist
Xu Liu received his Ph. D. from Baylor College of Medicine. During his Ph. D., he studied the mechanisms of learning and memory using fruit flies as a model system. By changing the expression of certain genes in the fly brain, he generated smart flies that can learn many times faster than their peers. Using live imaging, he also detected learning induced changes in the brain cells and observed memory formation inside the brain with light.
After graduation, he moved to MIT and joined Dr. Susumu Tonegawa's lab as a postdoctoral associate. He continued his pursuit of memory with light there. Instead of just watching memory formation, he developed a system in mice where one can not only identify and label cells in the brain for a particular memory, but also turn these cells on and off with light to activate this memory at will. This work was published in Science, and has been covered by the media worldwide, including The Boston Globe, Scientific American, The Daily Mail, and The Guardian.
Standard YouTube License @ TEDxTalks
No comments:
Post a Comment