Ideas worth spreading

A mouse. A laser beam. A manipulated memory.

1,209,279 views |

Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu |

TEDxBoston

• June 2013

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 important -- why they do this.

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 important -- why they do this.

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

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About the speakers

Steve Ramirez

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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.

Xu Liu

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In his groundbreaking work, Xu Liu investigated how to activate and deactivate specific memories in mice.

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

Read more about TEDx.