Are Memories Transferable – Or Edible?
8 hours ago
- #planarian worms
- #neuroscience history
- #memory transfer
- James McConnell's experiments in the 1960s suggested planarian worms could be conditioned and memories transferred via cannibalism.
- McConnell's work gained media attention but faced replication issues and skepticism from peers.
- Modern attempts by Sam Gershman's lab to reproduce McConnell's experiments have failed, with planarians showing no learning.
- Possible reasons include methodological biases in scoring behavior or changes in planarians over decades.
- Memory transfer research has revived in other organisms like sea slugs and C. elegans, supporting RNA-based memory ideas.
- Gershman is now shifting focus to C. elegans, a more reliable model organism for memory studies.