Scientists Transfer Memory Between Snails (scientificamerican.com) 92
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: UCLA neuroscientists reported Monday that they have transferred a memory from one animal to another via injections of RNA, a startling result that challenges the widely held view of where and how memories are stored in the brain. The finding from the lab of David Glanzman hints at the potential for new RNA-based treatments to one day restore lost memories and, if correct, could shake up the field of memory and learning. The researchers extracted RNA from the nervous systems of snails that had been shocked and injected the material into unshocked snails. RNA's primary role is to serve as a messenger inside cells, carrying protein-making instructions from its cousin DNA. But when this RNA was injected, these naive snails withdrew their siphons for extended periods of time after a soft touch. Control snails that received injections of RNA from snails that had not received shocks did not withdraw their siphons for as long.
Glanzman's group went further, showing that Aplysia sensory neurons in Petri dishes were more excitable, as they tend to be after being shocked, if they were exposed to RNA from shocked snails. Exposure to RNA from snails that had never been shocked did not cause the cells to become more excitable. The results, said Glanzman, suggest that memories may be stored within the nucleus of neurons, where RNA is synthesized and can act on DNA to turn genes on and off. He said he thought memory storage involved these epigenetic changes -- changes in the activity of genes and not in the DNA sequences that make up those genes -- that are mediated by RNA. This view challenges the widely held notion that memories are stored by enhancing synaptic connections between neurons. Rather, Glanzman sees synaptic changes that occur during memory formation as flowing from the information that the RNA is carrying. The study has been published in the journal eNeuro.
Glanzman's group went further, showing that Aplysia sensory neurons in Petri dishes were more excitable, as they tend to be after being shocked, if they were exposed to RNA from shocked snails. Exposure to RNA from snails that had never been shocked did not cause the cells to become more excitable. The results, said Glanzman, suggest that memories may be stored within the nucleus of neurons, where RNA is synthesized and can act on DNA to turn genes on and off. He said he thought memory storage involved these epigenetic changes -- changes in the activity of genes and not in the DNA sequences that make up those genes -- that are mediated by RNA. This view challenges the widely held notion that memories are stored by enhancing synaptic connections between neurons. Rather, Glanzman sees synaptic changes that occur during memory formation as flowing from the information that the RNA is carrying. The study has been published in the journal eNeuro.
eNeuro (Score:3)
That sure sounds like a reputable journal worth many tenure points.
Re:eNeuro (Score:5, Informative)
Not the worst of it. Apparently the article linked and Slashdot (who took the time to find the source) both missed out on this being about sea slugs, not snails.
Re:eNeuro (Score:4, Funny)
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Article? I don't even read the comments I'm replying to.
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Not the worst of it. Apparently the article linked and Slashdot (who took the time to find the source) both missed out on this being about sea slugs, not snails.
How does the precise species of the test subjects affect interpretation of the results?
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The difference between snails and slugs is morphologic, not taxonomic. Even "sea slug" is not a taxonomic category. They're all gastropod mollusks, with a spectrum of shell sizes.
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Ah, so they're experimenting on the homeless? That has to be some kind of ethics violation.
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Ah, so they're experimenting on the homeless? That has to be some kind of ethics violation.
Homeless hermaphrodites, the ignominy of it all. Ye could not say it was a perfect boy, Nor perfect wench: it seemed both and none of both to beene.
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Did you transfer data or did you transfer memory?
While not impossible to transfer the active memory from one system to the next, it normally doesn't happen, mostly because one of the key point of have a redundant system is that they don't go down at the same point. If the RAM was in sync. Then chances are they will crash at the same time because the same problems would span both systems.
Does Not Disprove Synaptic Memory Theory (Score:3)
I believe there is a significant amount of evidence that synaptic connections do store memories. This work shows evidence that RNA can also be involved in storing memories. It is not like it has to be one of the other. We know of a number of memory mechanisms (short term, long term, explicit, implicit, sensory, muscle, procedural, declarative, etc., etc.) it would not be at all surprising for there to be more than one way memory is stored for different purposes.
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Actually, I don't think it even shows that RNA stores memories.
IMO the software analogy is that RNA affects the LD_PRELOAD or /etc/alternatives for snails, so when the snail executes "/usr/snail/omg-XYZ-happened", the programmed response changes from "dont_care()" to "withdraw_siphon()".
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Based on the summary, it seems like RNA helps build the connections, which I would have assumed from highschool biology.
Of course I'm reading the summary with only highschool level biology, so I'm dumbing down the dumbed down...
Epigenetic Prions (Score:2)
I wonder if it was really ONLY RNA being moved between the snails. Perhaps some hormones were inadvertently getting injected as well. Injecting RNA shouldn't have any immediate effect, until and unless it's processed to produce proteins. Alternatively, perhaps some of the epigenetic structures function like prions, and merely by chemically interacting with other RNA, can 'infect' its epigenetic structures.
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RNA can be directly functional as an enzyme. That's part of the "RNA World" hypothesis: since RNA can store genetic information (though not as reliably as DNA), and directly codes proteins (which DNA cannot), and also can act chemically (though proteins are generally more efficient), perhaps RNA originally did all three jobs, all the time.
Repost (Score:2)
Uhhh. No. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a bit of a fail. It's interesting but its nothing close to memory transfer.
The shock stress probably caused the expression of a bunch of stress-related RNA, which when injected into other cells caused a similar stress response. This is like taking the blood of someone in a panic and injecting it into yourself. The adrenaline in the blood is probably going to give you a flight or fight response.
But is hardly a transfer of memory that caused the panic in the first place.
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Uhhh. No. They asked a snail what he remembered about a house in great detail, then they gave that memory to a completely different snail who had never been to that house, and he said the same thing.
Was the house perchance a pineapple?
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Get your ass to Mars (Score:2, Funny)
I never worked it out... did the snail simply have a dream implanted, or was he actually a freedom-fighting secret-agent on Mars?
Larry Niven - World Out Of Time (Score:2)
I believe that something similar was a plot device used by Larry Niven in his short story "Rammer", and the longer novel "World Out Of Time". Amazing how that seems to happen over and over again.
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Not quite; the brain-wiped criminal who originally had that body had had several different "corpcicle" memories uploaded into that body to get one that was ... "suitable" for the mission. J.B. Corbell (Corbett in the original short story) was the mind/memories extracted from the frozen corpse ("corpcicles") which extracted the RNA but didn't leave anything of the body.
And after that, Corbell was in that body for several hundred thousand years, but with near-lightspeed time dilation effects, only "experienc
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Yes, injections of memory RNA from long-dead experts provided instant knowledge, and IIRC some skills that would otherwise have to be learned.
"Bottled memory" from the diktors, I think. It's a damn fine adventure story with some great sci-fi concepts thrown in.
Hey, Netflix, how about licencing some Larry Niven material?
De ja..... (Score:5, Informative)
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He was clearly assuming the reader would have the intelligence to fill in the dots.
Sadly the reader was in fact you.
The worm runner's digest (Score:3)
Time to bring back the publication:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
This one kept a log of the results of the planarian worm experiments.
By the way, a very good read is the book titled "The Golem" by Harry Collins. It describes how murky some of the results of the scientific experiments were, despite the fact that today they are accepted as decisive evidence.
Next thing you know... (Score:2)
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Borg Snails
I was thinking more like Blade Runner (Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?) Replicants,
In their next article in eNeuro, the authors will propose a snail Voight-Kampff test . . .
Only got 150 baud (Score:2)
The data was moving at a snails pace.
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The data *were* moving......
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Your linked article says that it's still considered plural in scientific contexts...
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Your linked article says that it's still considered plural in scientific contexts...
And since I was making a joke, we can hardly consider my attempt scientific in context.
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half or full duplex?
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half or full duplex?
I'm gonna go with half in this instance as that is the most memorable :)
Somehow, (Score:1)
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This Cheapens some of my finest memories.
Those aren't your memories; they're the snail's niece's!
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Indeed. This is simply a response to physical stress. Takes 2 neurons to rub together to see, so I guess the ones reporting this do not have them.
Love the Vodka analogy!
In other news (Score:2)
This unfortunately will have all the massive medical benefits only for people as intelligent as snails.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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Brilliant.
I for one ... (Score:2)
I for one welcome our new gastropod overlords.
fear of snakes (Score:2)
I thought that snail looked suspicious (Score:2)
Data transfer between snails (Score:2)
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The transfer was done at a Snail's Pace.
Don't forget: (Score:2)
Half of science published today can't be replicated. I suspect this is on the not-repeatable side of that equation.
Not quite memories (Score:2)
The paper discusses RNA influencing "Epigenetic Engram for Long-Term Sensitization", it isn't like RNA injection is going to give you complex sensory memories.
You know what else might influence your epigenetic engram for long-term sensitization? Cocaine!
Now hold on a darn second . . . . (Score:1)