Memory transplant claimed in snails

David Glanzman and colleagues at UCLA claim to have transferred memories between giant hermaphrodite snails by means of an RNA transplant. Snails were sensitised by mild electric shocks to produce a certain reflex reaction. Their RNA was then injected into other snails, and the recipients demonstrated the same reaction. Snail neurons also displayed increased "excitability" when exposed in a petri dish to RNA from the shocked snails:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new...180969087/
https://www.livescience.com/62559-snail-...nsfer.html

Glanzman takes this as evidence against the theory that memories are stored by neuronal synapses. But the interpetation of his results is obviously very controversial.

Hm. Aren’t we born with certain “memories” in terms of certain reflexes or reactions? Almost like a bootstrap program? I’m not sure this is new at all if I’ve understood it correctly.

Is my learned reflex to a hot object really the same mechanism as remembering my grandma or what I want to buy from the shop? 

It’s clear that certain reactions can be learned and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that mechanism has a physical basis which can be identified in the body and transferred, but saying that’s the same as memory in other contexts seems a stretch to me.

Hm. Aren’t we born with certain “memories” in terms of certain reflexes or reactions? Almost like a bootstrap program? I’m not sure this is new at all if I’ve understood it correctly.

Is my learned reflex to a hot object really the same mechanism as remembering my grandma or what I want to buy from the shop? 

It’s clear that certain reactions can be learned and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that mechanism has a physical basis which can be identified in the body and transferred, but saying that’s the same as memory in other contexts seems a stretch to me.

Yes - that seems to be the drift of some of the sceptical comment - that this is more like an on/off state in the brain, rather than a memory. I think it's easy to believe an on/off state could be stored in a fairly simple way chemically, but harder to believe that would apply to something like, say, the text of the Gettysburg Address.

Yes - that seems to be the drift of some of the sceptical comment - that this is more like an on/off state in the brain, rather than a memory. I think it's easy to believe an on/off state could be stored in a fairly simple way chemically, but harder to believe that would apply to something like, say, the text of the Gettysburg Address.

A memory, such as the ability to re-experience aspects of an event is at a different level of mental process than an instinct.  Understanding how a coded message can exist in RNA operating in the information processing system of a living thing is really moving our process knowledge forward.  A basic building block of how bio-information works could be discovered.

In the worldview of informational realism, which I have been expressing - the RNA pattern is a structured expression of a coded message, so that in the operating environment of a similar living system - an information object  - that has the same function becomes a viable signal.  The environment I am speaking about is an informational space.  There is a corresponding electro-chemical physical space that enables the informational processes to manifest.  The two levels, info and physio must correspond as a working system.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new...een-snails-

Neuroscientists nonnies have long believed that memories are stored in the synapses, or junctions between the brain’s neurons. But UCLA neurobiologist David Glanzman subscribes to a different theory: the key to at least some memory storage, he thinks, is RNA, the cellular “messenger” that makes proteins and transmits DNA’s instructions to other parts of the cell.

I understand that linear thinking nonnie-scientists wish to find the processes through which consciousness produces (projects) the illusion of space-time physical reality...

...however...

...it is kinda like learning that gasoline runs the car...and now what? Modern science has few roads to travel past the point of understanding life processes.

Which, by the by, are directly related to the interaction between the etheric and physical self from the etheric all processes originate.

A memory, such as the ability to re-experience aspect of an event is at a different level of mental process than an instinct.  Understanding how a coded message can exist in RNA operating in the information processing system of a living thing is really moving our process knowledge forward.  A basic building block of how bio-information works could be discovered.

In the worldview of informational realism, which I have been expressing - the RNA pattern is a structured expression of a coded message, so that in the operating environment of a similar living system - an information object that has the same function becomes a viable signal.  The environment I am speaking about is an informational space.  There is a corresponding electro-chemical physical space that enables the informational processes to manifest.  The two levels, info and physio must correspond as a working system.

Presumably the ‘bootstrap’ responses I mentioned earlier must find their way into the growing organism - how else other than through genetic material?

Presumably the ‘bootstrap’ responses I mentioned earlier must find their way into the growing organism - how else other than through genetic material?

This is the subject of my oft-repeated questioning of instinct. When I ask about how a new life inherits instinct I am almost always fobbed of with some hand-wave like "hard-wired" or programmed into our DNA. These don't satisfy me as explanations and the materialists have yet to come up with something that does.

This is the subject of my oft-repeated questioning of instinct. When I ask about how a new life inherits instinct I am almost always fobbed of with some hand-wave like "hard-wired" or programmed into our DNA. These don't satisfy me as explanations and the materialists have yet to come up with something that does.

Instincts are complex stuff and one has to ask if we are just animated protoplasm, why do we have to survive anyway?  Don't tell me one entity suddenly and randomly wanted to survive and somehow knew how to do it as well and then passed this on genetically to it's children because you will be asking too much faith from me if you do.

To take this a step further and putting aside, for a moment, my argument about instinct, there is evidence that some traits, including behavioural, are inherited. The fact that they are inherited points directly to the genes because that is the accepted mechanism for transference between generations. But how? DNA codes for proteins. So the argument goes, as far as I understand it, that traits and behaviour are influenced by brain chemistry and brain chemistry is influenced at the outset by genetics. This is the standard materialist viewpoint because, as everyone knows (according to them), everything to do with the brain - including thoughts, feelings, behaviour and the mind itself - are epiphenomena arising out of electro-chemical activity in the brain. This article is worth reading:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...ersonality

This is a quote from the Wikipedia article on Behavioural Genetics:

It is clear from multiple lines of evidence that all researched behavioural traits and disorders are influenced by genes; that is, they are heritable.

Note the absolute assertion that heritable means genetic. Obviously there is no room for speculation that heritable behaviours might be, at least partially, due to other factors. We, on this forum, spend a lot of time talking about such factors (reincarnation, past life memories, etc.). We also talk a lot about mind and how mind is not just the result of the way chemicals in the brain are configured and operate. Of course, such things are taboo elsewhere.

This is the subject of my oft-repeated questioning of instinct. When I ask about how a new life inherits instinct I am almost always fobbed of with some hand-wave like "hard-wired" or programmed into our DNA. These don't satisfy me as explanations and the materialists have yet to come up with something that does.

They need to show it to satisfy you. I don’t think your position is unreasonable. Then of course there is Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of biomorphic fields, which may account for seemingly inherited responses perhaps?