A study claiming that a “memory” could be transferred from one animal to another in form of an injection has caused a lot of excitement. The Futurist said that Scientists Transferred Memories From One Snail to Another. Someday, They Could Do The Same in Humans. But I have to say I’m not convinced.
In the paper, published in eNeuro, UCLA researchers Alexis Bédécarratsand collagues report that they extracted RNA from the neurons of sea slugs (Aplysia) after training them to be sensitive to touch. This RNA, when injected into untrained Aplysia, caused them to become sensitized to touch as well.
…
There’s a couple of reasons why I don’t think this is evidence of “memory transfer”.
Firstly, what was transferred here was hardly a memory in the usual sense of the word. It is simply an increase in the sensitivity of a set of neurons.
…
Secondly, the claimed transfer by RNA injection seems biologically implausible. This isn’t my field, but as far as I know from molecular biology, you can’t just inject RNA into an animal’s bloodstream (or haemocoel in this case) and expect it to enter cells.
…
I think this is interesting work that deserves further research, but I’m far from being convinced that we need to rethink conventional theories of memory. Not yet anyway.
Read full, original post: Slug Life: About That Injectable Memory Study
