By: Ian Sample Science editor |
Scientists ‘transplant memories’ between sea snails via injection
| Neuroscience | The Guardian
Experiment shows some memories are encoded in molecules that form part of an organism’s genetic machinery, researchers say
Science may never know what wistful memories play on the mind of the California sea hare, a foot-long hermaphrodite marine snail, as it munches on algae in the shallow tide pools of the Pacific coast.
But in a new study, researchers claim to have made headway in understanding the simplest kind of memory a mollusc might form, and, with a swift injection, managed to transfer such a memory from one sea snail to another.
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