Yiu and Ramirez

In the Ramirez study, I found it interesting that they were able to cause a false memory in the rats. Their hypothesis made some sense, that stimulating the part of the hippocampus that reacts to negative stimuli would create a false memory inciting fear, even if the space is safe. This is also interesting when you think about it in tandem with the Yiu study, where they found that neurons that have relatively higher excitability are more likely to be used in memory formation. Yiu went further to discern whether or not the fear responses were due to general anxiety, which was different than the Ramirez study. It would be interesting to see if the Ramirez study could go further and try the same, to see if the fear responses they saw were results of anxiety in the rats. I would be curious to see if there was a way to use the results from both of these experiments, to see how memories could be altered by changing neural excitability and association. Could a rat be tricked into thinking a harmful place is safe?