Steve Ramirez

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Steve Ramirez (born 1988) is a neuroscientist whose professional career centers around the manipulation of the brain's physical properties. [1] [2] Through his work, Ramirez aims to find methods of relief for symptoms of mental health disorders through the use of optogenetics. [3] [4]

Contents

Ramirez graduated from MIT in 2010 and later earned his Ph.D. in neuroscience for his work on memories in the lab of Susumu Tonegawa. [5] [6]

Early life

Ramirez was born in Massachusetts to Salvadoran immigrants and grew up in Everett, Massachusetts. His parents, older brother, and sister escaped wartime El Salvador towards the end of the 1970s and came to the United States. [2] In his early teens, Ramirez's cousin experienced atrophy and coma during childbirth, which influenced Ramirez's curiosity on the topic of neuroscience, and the ability to physically manipulate brain chemistry. [1] He later attended high school in Massachusetts.

Ramirez attended college at Boston University in Massachusetts where he was trying to find an academic field that suited him. His girlfriend at the time suggested to Ramirez that he should seek guidance from the head of department of the neuroscience program at Boston University. Ramirez agreed, and began to be mentored by the head of department, where he developed a passion for the field of work and found a community among the members of the program. When Ramirez and his girlfriend broke up, he was inspired to see if he could change the feelings behind those memories while keeping the memory intact. [7] [5]

Throughout the rest of his education, Ramirez decided to focus his studies on the neuroscience of memory, which began the path of his career and achievements. [5] After graduating from college in 2010, Ramirez joined the lab of Susumu Tonegawa where he continued his studies, and eventually earned his Ph.D. in neuroscience. Ramirez's earliest scientific work occurred with the help of his mentor, Xu Liu, who Ramirez attributes much of his achievements to, and claims that Liu taught him many skills necessary for their work. [2]

Career

Steve Ramirez is known for his studies on memory where he went on to publish six research articles under Tonegawa Susumu's lab. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] Ramirez and Liu also gave a TED Talk in which they discussed their research. Ramirez expressed how he was manipulating the brain cells of mice to respond to pulses of light and manipulate their memories. He was aiming to make this process accessible to humans as well to treat mental illness. [7]

Awards

Selected publications

  1. [8]
  2. [10]
  3. [9]
  4. [11]
  5. [12]
  6. [13]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hippocampus</span> Vertebrate brain region involved in memory consolidation

The hippocampus is a major component of the brain of humans and other vertebrates. Humans and other mammals have two hippocampi, one in each side of the brain. The hippocampus is part of the limbic system, and plays important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory, and in spatial memory that enables navigation. The hippocampus is located in the allocortex, with neural projections into the neocortex, in humans as well as other primates. The hippocampus, as the medial pallium, is a structure found in all vertebrates. In humans, it contains two main interlocking parts: the hippocampus proper, and the dentate gyrus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amygdala</span> Each of two small structures deep within the temporal lobe of complex vertebrates

The amygdala is a paired nuclear complex present in the cerebral hemispheres of vertebrates. It is considered part of the limbic system. In primates, it is located medially within the temporal lobes. It consists of many nuclei, each made up of further subnuclei. The subdivision most commonly made is into the basolateral, central, cortical, and medial nuclei together with the intercalated cell clusters. The amygdala has a primary role in the processing of memory, decision-making, and emotional responses. The amygdala was first identified and named by Karl Friedrich Burdach in 1822.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fear conditioning</span> Behavioral paradigm in which organisms learn to predict aversive events

Pavlovian fear conditioning is a behavioral paradigm in which organisms learn to predict aversive events. It is a form of learning in which an aversive stimulus is associated with a particular neutral context or neutral stimulus, resulting in the expression of fear responses to the originally neutral stimulus or context. This can be done by pairing the neutral stimulus with an aversive stimulus. Eventually, the neutral stimulus alone can elicit the state of fear. In the vocabulary of classical conditioning, the neutral stimulus or context is the "conditional stimulus" (CS), the aversive stimulus is the "unconditional stimulus" (US), and the fear is the "conditional response" (CR).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brain-derived neurotrophic factor</span> Protein found in humans

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), or abrineurin, is a protein that, in humans, is encoded by the BDNF gene. BDNF is a member of the neurotrophin family of growth factors, which are related to the canonical nerve growth factor (NGF), a family which also includes NT-3 and NT-4/NT-5. Neurotrophic factors are found in the brain and the periphery. BDNF was first isolated from a pig brain in 1982 by Yves-Alain Barde and Hans Thoenen.

An engram is a unit of cognitive information imprinted in a physical substance, theorized to be the means by which memories are stored as biophysical or biochemical changes in the brain or other biological tissue, in response to external stimuli.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adult neurogenesis</span> Generating of neurons from neural stem cells in adults

Adult neurogenesis is the process in which neurons are generated from neural stem cells in the adult. This process differs from prenatal neurogenesis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Place cell</span> Place-activated hippocampus cells found in some mammals

A place cell is a kind of pyramidal neuron in the hippocampus that becomes active when an animal enters a particular place in its environment, which is known as the place field. Place cells are thought to act collectively as a cognitive representation of a specific location in space, known as a cognitive map. Place cells work with other types of neurons in the hippocampus and surrounding regions to perform this kind of spatial processing. They have been found in a variety of animals, including rodents, bats, monkeys and humans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susumu Tonegawa</span> Japanese scientist (born 1939)

Susumu Tonegawa is a Japanese scientist who was the sole recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1987 for his discovery of V(D)J recombination, the genetic mechanism which produces antibody diversity. Although he won the Nobel Prize for his work in immunology, Tonegawa is a molecular biologist by training and he again changed fields following his Nobel Prize win; he now studies neuroscience, examining the molecular, cellular and neuronal basis of memory formation and retrieval.

Ca<sup>2+</sup>/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II Class of enzymes

Ca2+
/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II is a serine/threonine-specific protein kinase that is regulated by the Ca2+
/calmodulin complex. CaMKII is involved in many signaling cascades and is thought to be an important mediator of learning and memory. CaMKII is also necessary for Ca2+
 homeostasis and reuptake in cardiomyocytes, chloride transport in epithelia, positive T-cell selection, and CD8 T-cell activation.

Molecular cellular cognition (MCC) is a branch of neuroscience that involves the study of cognitive processes with approaches that integrate molecular, cellular and behavioral mechanisms. Key goals of MCC studies include the derivation of molecular and cellular explanations of cognitive processes, as well as finding mechanisms and treatments for cognitive disorders.

Optogenetics is a biological technique to control the activity of neurons or other cell types with light. This is achieved by expression of light-sensitive ion channels, pumps or enzymes specifically in the target cells. On the level of individual cells, light-activated enzymes and transcription factors allow precise control of biochemical signaling pathways. In systems neuroscience, the ability to control the activity of a genetically defined set of neurons has been used to understand their contribution to decision making, learning, fear memory, mating, addiction, feeding, and locomotion. In a first medical application of optogenetic technology, vision was partially restored in a blind patient with Retinitis pigmentosa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Boyden</span> American neuroscientist

Edward S. Boyden is an American neuroscientist and entrepreneur at MIT. He is the Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology, and a full member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. He is recognized for his work on optogenetics and expansion microscopy. Boyden joined the MIT faculty in 2007, and continues to develop new optogenetic tools as well as other technologies for the manipulation and analysis of brain structure and activity. He received the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karl Deisseroth</span> American optogeneticist (born 1971)

Karl Alexander Deisseroth is an American scientist. He is the D.H. Chen Foundation Professor of Bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alcino J. Silva</span> American neuroscientist (born 1961)

Alcino J. Silva is a Portuguese-American neuroscientist who was the recipient of the 2008 Order of Prince Henry and elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2013 for his contributions to the molecular cellular cognition of memory, a field he pioneered with the publication of two articles in Science in 1992.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TetTag</span> Mouse line used in memory research

The TetTag mouse is a bi-transgenic mutant used in neuroscience research that expresses a persistent marker under control of the immediate early gene fos. This mouse strain allows the stable labeling of activated neurons in mice in a defined time window of several hours.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ALTO-100</span> BDNF-modulating drug for depression and PTSD

ALTO-100, previously known as NSI-189, is a drug described as a hippocampal neurogenesis stimulant and indirect brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) modulator which is under development for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD), bipolar depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). There has also been interest in ALTO-100 for possible treatment of cognitive impairment and neurodegeneration. It is taken by mouth.

Sharp waves and ripples (SWRs) are oscillatory patterns produced by extremely synchronised activity of neurons in the mammalian hippocampus and neighbouring regions which occur spontaneously in idle waking states or during NREM sleep. They can be observed with a variety of imaging methods, such as EEG. They are composed of large amplitude sharp waves in local field potential and produced by tens of thousands of neurons firing together within 30–100 ms window. They are some of the most synchronous oscillations patterns in the brain, making them susceptible to pathological patterns such as epilepsy.They have been extensively characterised and described by György Buzsáki and have been shown to be involved in memory consolidation in NREM sleep and the replay of memories acquired during wakefulness.

Joe Z. Tsien（钱卓） is a neuroscientist who pioneered Cre/lox-neurogenetics in the mid-1990s, a versatile toolbox for neuroscientists to study the complex relationships between genes, neural circuits, and behaviors. He is also known as the creator of the smart mouse Doogie in the late 1990s while being a faculty member at Princeton University.

Attila Losonczy is a Hungarian neuroscientist, Professor of Neuroscience at Columbia University Medical Center. Losonczy's main area of research is on the relationship between neural networks and behavior, specifically with regard to learning in the hippocampus.

Christine Denny is an American neuroscientist and associate professor of Clinical Neurobiology in Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City. Denny investigates the molecular mechanisms underlying learning and memory. She developed a novel technique to label neurons that encode specific memories. She used this technique to probe what happens to hippocampal memory traces in different disease states.

References

  1. 1 2 "Steve Ramirez". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2023-11-07.
  2. 1 2 3 "The 30 Top Thinkers Under 30: Steve Ramirez, 26, Neuroscience". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 2023-11-06.
  3. ↑ "Steve Ramirez". explorer-directory.nationalgeographic.org. Retrieved 2023-11-06.
  4. ↑ "Steve Ramirez, Ph.D." Steve Ramirez, Ph.D. | Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. 2023-05-20. Retrieved 2023-11-09.
  5. 1 2 3 "Steve Ramirez Reshapes Memories in the Brains of Mice". The Scientist Magazine®. Retrieved 2023-11-06.
  6. ↑ "Emerging Scholar Profile: Ramirez Finds That Relationships Remain Key in Psychological and Brain Sciences". Diverse: Issues In Higher Education. 2018-02-04. Retrieved 2023-11-09.
  7. 1 2 "Steve Ramirez: If We Could Erase Memories ... Should We?". TED RADIO HOUR. NPR. October 13, 2017.
  8. 1 2 Liu, X.; Ramirez, S.; Pang, P. T.; Puryear, C. B.; Govindarajan, A.; Deisseroth, K.; Tonegawa, S. (2012). "Optogenetic stimulation of a hippocampal engram activates fear memory recall". Nature. 484 (7394): 381–385. doi:10.1038/nature11028. PMC   3331914 . PMID   22441246.
  9. 1 2 Redondo, R. L.; Kim, J.; Arons, A. L.; Ramirez, S.; Liu, X.; Tonegawa, S. (2014). "Bidirectional switch of the valence associated with a hippocampal contextual memory engram". Nature. 513 (7518): 426–430. doi:10.1038/nature13725. PMC   4169316 . PMID   25162525.
  10. 1 2 Ramirez, S.; Liu, X.; Lin, P. A.; Suh, J.; Pignatelli, M.; Redondo, R. L.; Ryan, T. J.; Tonegawa, S. (2013). "Creating a false memory in the hippocampus". Science. 341 (6144): 387–391. doi:10.1126/science.1239073. hdl: 1721.1/85964 . PMID   23888038.
  11. 1 2 Ramirez, S.; Liu, X.; MacDonald, C. J.; Moffa, A.; Zhou, J.; Redondo, R. L.; Tonegawa, S. (2015). "Activating positive memory engrams suppresses depression-like behaviour". Nature. 522 (7556): 335–339. doi:10.1038/nature14514. PMC   5583720 . PMID   26085274.
  12. 1 2 Ramirez, S. (2018). "Crystallizing a memory". Science. 360 (6394): 1182–1183. doi:10.1126/science.aau0043. PMID   29903960.
  13. 1 2 Shpokayte, M.; McKissick, O.; Guan, X.; Yuan, B.; Rahsepar, B.; Fernandez, F. R.; Ruesch, E.; Grella, S. L.; White, J. A.; Liu, X. S.; Ramirez, S. (2022). "Hippocampal cells segregate positive and negative engrams". Communications Biology. 5 (1): 1009. doi:10.1038/s42003-022-03906-8. PMC   9512908 . PMID   36163262.
  14. ↑ "Xu Liu and Steve Ramirez win 2014 American Ingenuity Award". MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 2014-10-27. Retrieved 2023-10-26.
  15. ↑ "Steve Ramirez". explorer-directory.nationalgeographic.org. Retrieved 2023-10-26.
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