Do you begrudge someone ’s memories ? encounter your favorite artist exist , or time with a loved one now gone , perhaps ? One day , perhaps we will be able to copy those memory into our mastermind . It ’s an unimaginably long route there , but a fresh report might be considered the first footstep as scientist have successfully " transferred " computer storage from snail into another .
UCLA researcher gave electrical shock to the tails of Aplysia marine snail , not strong enough to harm them , but sufficient to cause mild bother and trigger the escargot ’s withdrawal reception into its shell . The jounce were delivered in lot of five , 20 minute apart , followed by another bent of five a day later .
Snails prime in this manner were clearly more wary of the humanity , and when the team tapped on their shells would crawfish out for an average of 50 bit . Unshocked Aplysia twin drop just a second or so on their carapace in response to similar taps .
Such a report could be compare toPavlov , but senior authorDr David Glanzmantook it somewhere very different . function on a theory memories are put in in epigenetic modifications to DNA , he pull up nervous organisation RNA from each grouping of snails . The RNA from those given the seismic disturbance was injected into unshocked snails , while that from the snails that had not been prim up was given to a control chemical group .
escargot get RNA from their jolt - receive counterparts responded to taps almost as defensively as those that had received the shocks themselves , withdrawing for 40 seconds on average . The control mathematical group were unaffected , the team account ineNeuroproving the behavior was not an effect of the RNA transfer process , but of the memories the RNA hold .
" It ’s as though we transferred the memory , " Dr Glanzman read in astatement .
We still do n’t understand how computer storage are recorded , particularly the much more complex experiences of color , sound , and taste . Nevertheless , the piece of work provided some hints . For one thing , when the RNA was transferred to snail neurons in Petri dishes , the process was find to increase the excitability ofsensory neurons , which convert external stimuli to electric neural impulse , but not movement - controlling motor neurons .
Moreover , the RNA from sensitise snailsmethylatedthe recipient neuron ’s DNA , suppressing factor verbal expression and matching what occurs in the DNA of snail that had experienced the shock straight , support the epigenetic remembering theory .
The determination contradict the dominant synaptic theory of memory , which Glanzman has previously challenged by interrupt protein synthetic thinking in Aplysia , affect memoriesin the process . " If memories were stack away at synapses , there is no way our experiment would have work , " Glanzman said . He doubts this is something that would have changed after our evolutionary path separated from mollusks , although we have around 5,000 times as many neurons as Aplysia do .
