Ideas worth spreading

Can we edit memories?

2,403,423 views |

Amy Milton |

TEDxCambridgeUniversity

• March 2019

Trauma and PTSD rewire your brain -- especially your memory -- and can unearth destructive emotional responses when stirred. Could we eliminate these triggers without erasing the memories themselves? Enter neurologist Amy Milton's mind-blowing, memory-editing clinical research poised to defuse the damaging effects of painful remembered experiences and offer a potential path toward better mental health.

Trauma and PTSD rewire your brain -- especially your memory -- and can unearth destructive emotional responses when stirred. Could we eliminate these triggers without erasing the memories themselves? Enter neurologist Amy Milton's mind-blowing, memory-editing clinical research poised to defuse the damaging effects of painful remembered experiences and offer a potential path toward better mental health.

This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxCambridgeUniversity, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

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About the speaker

Amy Milton

Behavioral neuroscientist

See speaker profile

Amy Milton researches to understand how memories are updated in the brain.

Michel Gondry | NBC Universal, 2004 | Watch

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

A fictional take on the notion of destroying memories. While distinctly a work of science fiction, it is a wonderful and interesting film.

Nature, 2015 | Book

Learning to Forget

Brief documentary by the journal Nature describing the studies aiming to exploit reconsolidation in human participants.

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This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxCambridgeUniversity, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Read more about TEDx.