TEDMED talk
November 2016:
What if the missing memories in amnesia were actually retrievable?
After studying in Dublin and Cambridge, Tomás Ryan found his way to the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Tomás dedicates his work to understanding the neuroarchitecture of memory. Through a series of experiments where the memory engrams of mice were directly manipulated, Tomás and his collaborators discovered that memories thought to disappear in mouse models of amnesia might actually remain intact and are potentially retrievable. Challenging conventional notions of memory storage, retrieval, and brain damage, this work sets the stage for potential memory recall in patients with amnesia due to trauma, stress, alcohol and drug abuse, dementia, and aging. Tomás is currently a Senior Research Fellow at MIT, and an incoming Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin.
