Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. The science of memory manipulation is farther along than you might think.

Scientists have been able to weaken or erase memories, even implant new or false ones with mice,

inspiring sci-fi storylines and films and series like severance.

I acknowledge that henceforth my access to my memories will be spatially dictated.

I will be unable to access outside recollections whilst on lumens severed basement floor,

nor retain work memories upon my ascent.

My guest, neuroscientist Steve Ramirez, has played a big role in moving forward memory

manipulation in hopes of transforming the treatment of brain disorders.

He's written a book about it and about the events in his life that caused him to think

about changing his own memories.

It's called How to Change a Memory,

one neuroscientist's quest to alter the past. He joins me now. Welcome to Forum, Steve.

Thank you so much for having me today. Really glad to have you. So where does the science of memory

manipulation stand? Can you bring us up to speed generally on what

scientists have successfully been able to do? Yeah, the short of it, and I don't think it's too

much of a spoiler here to say that the answer on how to change a memory is to recall it,

to remember the thing that you're trying to change. It's one thing that we've

learned from the last decades of neuroscience research is that memory, it might feel like a video

recording of the past that you take on your phone that you can rewind to again and again. But it's

much more dynamic and much more like a save-as file on your word document, for

example, where memory is much more flexible, changeable dynamic than we expected, especially when

we recall a memory is when those changes begin to take place. The point being now that you can

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