How Neuroscience Says You Can Rewire a Bad Memory

A Fire Alarm at 1 a.m.

Not long ago, I was staying in a hotel with my grandsons when the fire alarm went off at one in the morning. Half asleep, we threw on coats, grabbed shoes, and hustled down the stairs into the chilly night air. Turned out, it wasn’t just a drill there had been a small fire.

Months later, same setup: hotel stay, fire alarm, middle of the night. One grandson panicked. The other practically smiled and said, “All right, here we go.” Same event, two very different reactions.

So what’s going on here Neuroscience has a word for it: valence assignment. It’s the way our brain tags an experience with either a positive or negative charge, almost like marking a mental file folder. That tag influences whether we seek a similar experience in the future or avoid it like the plague.

The Science of Valence

At the cellular level, the process isn’t completely nailed down. What scientists do know is that different sets of neurons fire depending on whether a memory is coded as positive or negative. Think of it as two parallel tracks: one heading toward reward, the other toward avoidance.

Professor Kay Tye and her team at the Salk Institute tried to find out what flips the switch. They zeroed in on a signaling molecule called neurotensin. By genetically editing mice so their neurons lacked neurotensin, they found something striking: the animals could no longer assign positive feelings to experiences. Negative tagging, on the other hand, worked just fine almost too well. Without neurotensin, the brain seemed biased toward seeing danger everywhere.

That actually makes sense if you think about survival. For most of human history, assuming “bad until proven safe” was a decent way to stay alive. Fear, after all, is protective.

When researchers later pumped in extra neurotensin, the effect flipped. The mice began tagging experiences more positively and dialed down their negative responses. In plain English: neurotensin seems to act like the brain’s “switch operator,” guiding experiences toward optimism or caution.

Can You Hack This Switch

Now, before anyone runs off hoping for neurotensin supplements at the local pharmacy no, that’s not an option. But there are practical ways to mimic what neurotensin does by reframing how you handle memories.

Take the grandson who decided to view the fire alarm as an adventure instead of a threat. That’s reframing. He chose to see the event as proof that alarms keep people safe, not as proof that fires are terrifying. The brain follows his lead: next time, his default reaction is less fear, more readiness.

We can do the same in daily life. Say you botch a sales presentation. You could let that memory fester into, “I’m terrible at this, never again.” Or you could mark it with a positive lesson: “I wasn’t prepared enough, next time I’ll pause to read the room.” Over time, the latter mindset transforms the failure into a story you tell with a shrug, maybe even a laugh because it led to you getting better.

Confidence as a Buffer

Another way to tilt the scales is by tapping into self worth before stepping into situations that could go sideways. Psychologists have found that brief self affirmations literally pausing to remind yourself of what you’re good at reduce the sting of failure.

It’s situational, of course. I might feel confident in a weight room even if I’m not the strongest person there, but drop me into a Pilates class and my confidence evaporates in seconds. You’ve probably felt the same. The key is that confidence tends to bleed from one area to another. If you remind yourself that you’re excellent at leading your team or solving tough problems, that mental buffer makes you more resilient if the new challenge doesn’t go perfectly.

So before a nerve wracking task say, public speaking pause to think about the other things you consistently do well. That way, if it doesn’t land the way you hoped, you don’t define yourself by the stumble. It’s just one more data point, not the whole story.

Be Specific With Your Feelings

Granularity matters too. If you just label an emotion “stress,” your brain is likely to lump it in with other bad experiences. But if you identify it as “nervous excitement” or “concern,” you can reshape the meaning.

When the hotel alarm went off, dying in a fire was statistically unlikely. The building had multiple exits and fire escapes. We knew what to do. Framing the experience with specific facts rather than the vague cloud of “stress” made it easier to view the alarm as manageable, maybe even useful.

One grandson who had initially panicked eventually came home after a school fire drill and told us, “I wasn’t scared this time. I’ve been through the real thing.” It’s not the conclusion I expected, but hey whatever works.

The Real Takeaway

You can’t control every event life throws at you, but you can influence the emotional tags your brain slaps on those events. The more you practice assigning positive outcomes or at least constructive ones the more resilient you become.

That doesn’t mean ignoring fear. Fear is natural, sometimes even necessary. But bravery isn’t the absence of fear; it’s doing what needs to be done despite fear. And finding a way to tilt your memories toward positive or useful interpretations makes that bravery a little easier to summon.

In the end, the trick isn’t about erasing bad memories. It’s about rewriting the mental captions underneath them, so instead of “disaster,” the file reads “lesson” or “stepping stone.” Over time, those labels change not just how you remember the past, but how confidently you face what’s next.

Open Your Mind !!!

Source: Inc,