Posted on 12/20/2019 7:14:54 AM PST by BenLurkin
Glanzman’s unpopular hypothesis was that they might reside in the nucleus of the neuron cell, where DNA and RNA sequences compose instructions for life processes.
Glanzman’s team found that the RNA from trained donors induced learning, while the RNA from untrained donors had no effect. They had transferred a memory, vaguely but surely, from one animal to another, and they had strong evidence that RNA was the memory-transferring agent.
The work of Douglas Blackiston, an Allen Discovery Center scientist at Tufts University... wanted to know if a butterfly could remember something about its life as a caterpillar, so he exposed caterpillars to the scent of ethyl acetate followed by a mild electric shock. After acquiring an aversion to ethyl acetate, the caterpillars pupated and, after emerging as adult butterflies several weeks later, were tested for memory of their aversive training. Surprisingly, the adult butterflies remembered—but how? The entire caterpillar becomes a cytoplasmic soup before it metamorphosizes into a butterfly.
It’s hard to study exactly what goes on during pupation in vivo, but there’s a subset of caterpillar neurons that may persist in what are called “mushroom bodies,” a pair of structures involved in olfaction that many insects have located near their antennae. In other words, some structure remains. “It’s not soup,” Blackiston says. “Well, maybe it’s soup, but it’s chunky.” There’s near complete pruning of neurons during pupation, and the few neurons that remain become disconnected from other neurons, dissolving the synaptic connections between them in the process, until they reconnect with other neurons during the remodeling into the butterfly brain.
If the memory was stored anywhere, Blackiston suspects it was stored in the subset of neurons located in the mushroom bodies, the only known carryover material from the caterpillar to the butterfly.
(Excerpt) Read more at nautil.us ...
If the memory was stored anywhere, Blackiston suspects it was stored in the subset of neurons located in the mushroom bodies, the only known carryover material from the caterpillar to the butterfly.
...
They could have made a more accurate headline.
I remember the time I knew what happiness was.
To be fair, Big Media’s BEST are all working overtime against America.
Ah, so instead of human fetuses being called blobs of cells, they’ll now be called cytoplasmic soup because that sounds more hip.
That’s sad.
May your days be merry and bright. :-)
Well, there is a portion of the article not excerpted about the injection of memory into planar worms, one form another.
Memories...all alone in the moonlight?
“Well, maybe it’s soup, but it’s chunky.”
No respect for freepers at breakfast. :(
Nice!
““Well, maybe it’s soup, but it’s chunky.”
No respect for freepers at breakfast. :(”
Don’t have soup for breakfast.
or, get up earlier.
Nothing new, this was demonstrated scores of years ago with flatworms that were fed with chopped up maze running flatworms. The fed worms ran the maze first time.
Matter of fact I often have soup for breakfast in wintertime. Beats cold cereal, for sure.
But not mushroom soup or butterfly soup with chunks of pupae.
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