system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Can you delete specific memories by removing specific brain cells?

If a surgeon, say, uses a scalpel to scrape some cells out of the temporal lobe, would the patient wake up missing certain memories?
gpt
It's not that easy.

Memories are stored distributed around the brain and can't be said to be stored in any specific cell or set of cells. Such a "scraping" procedure -- if it affected memory at all, instead of some other function -- might disrupt certain memory connections but it's hard to defend the idea that the memories would be completely removed from a small-scale injury.

If you want to get down to sci-fi, theoretically speaking, since there are a finite number of synapses in the brain, there must be a finite number of cuts necessary to remove all connections involved in a certain memory. That says nothing to whether it would be possible to surgically remove SPECIFIC memories without otherwise disrupting normal functioning, nor does it imply there is a way to determine which neurons and synapses are particular to a specific memory.