In the Media | Photonics Center

Steve Ramirez: Forget about it

February 3, 2026

Experiments with mice have shown it’s possible to tinker with and even erase a memory. The goal for neuroscience now is to apply the science to help people struggling with PTSD and other mentally crippling memories.

Steve Ramirez

‘Memory manipulation is inevitable’: How rewriting memory in the lab might one day heal humans

December 27, 2025

We often think of memories like the contents of a museum: static exhibits that we view to understand the present and prepare for the future. The latest research, however, suggests they are more like well-thumbed library books that wear and change a little bit every time they’re pulled off the shelf.

Steve Ramirez

Science Friday

Memories Change. But Can We Change Them On Purpose?

November 14, 2025

Neuroscientist Steve Ramirez joins Host Ira Flatow to explain how memory manipulation could revolutionize the way we treat brain disorders. They also discuss Ramirez’s book, How to Change a Memory: One Neuroscientist’s Quest to Alter the Past, and how the sudden death of his friend and scientific collaborator made him rethink the role of memory.

Steve Ramirez

STAT

I’m a neuroscientist who works on memory manipulation. My work helps me recover from addiction

November 4, 2025

When philosophers imagined the ship of Theseus, they asked: Can a vessel that has all its planks replaced one by one over time as it sails uncharted waters still be considered the same ship?

Steve Ramirez

Psychology Today

The Memory Manipulator

November 4, 2025

Neuroscientist Steve Ramirez is on a quest to alter your past—and our future.

Steve Ramirez

Psychology Today

Science Fiction Descriptions of Memory Manipulation May Become a Reality

October 28, 2025

During the last 30 years, Steve Ramirez indicates, neuroscientists have brought that wish closer to a reality. We now understand how and where our brains receive, store, and retrieve memories. Through a process called optogenetics, scientists use pulses of light with millisecond resolution to control neural activity in mammalian cells, edit memories and even create them from scratch.

Steve Ramirez

Scientific American

Edward Damiano’s Bold Bet on a Bionic Cure

October 14, 2025

How a father’s love, entrepreneurship and tech advances could lead to a working artificial pancreas

BIC

Time

Boston University Wireless MRI Coils

October 9, 2025

MRI scans may soon leave costly, bulky hospital machines behind. Boston University researchers have built bendable wireless coil sensors that attach to the body, weigh less than an AA battery, and cost only $50.

Xin Zhang

Laser Focus World

Electronic-photonic-quantum system on a chip

September 26, 2025

In a leap forward for quantum scaling, scientists from Boston University, UC Berkeley, and Northwestern University fabricated the first electronic-photonic-quantum system...