BU Researcher, Steve Ramirez, Draws on Research for Insights into the Science of Remembering
Neuroscientist Steve Ramirez stuffs his Boston University office with memories: an inflatable T. rex gifted on his first day of grad school; an illustrator-autographed Spider-Man comic from his childhood; and lyrics to the 1990s rock song “All Star,” written on Post-it notes splayed across his wall, from one of his students a few years back. “I live more in my memory than most of my friends,” says Ramirez (CAS’10), a BU College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of psychological and brain sciences. “I really like going through memory lane.”
It’s an apt pastime for a scientist who describes memory science and how it manifests in our daily lives—including his own—in his first book, How to Change a Memory: One Neuroscientist’s Quest to Alter the Past (Princeton University Press, 2025). Ramirez is pioneering research on science’s emerging ability to manipulate memory, with the goal of improving mental health treatment. The book, which Publishers Weekly declared “a riveting debut,” is part memoir, part field guide, blending lay-friendly explanations of concepts like engrams—the physical traces that memories etch onto our brains—with autobiographical vignettes.
To read more, visit THE BRINK where this article originally appeared on November 18, 2025.