Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hi,
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, I'm Lauren vogel Bomb, and this is a
Speaker 1: classic brain Stuff episode. You know, for a show called
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, we don't spend a whole lot of time
Speaker 1: talking about the brain. The show got its name because
Speaker 1: the original host and writer, who you might have heard
Speaker 1: on earlier episodes, was a guy named Marshall Brain, not
Speaker 1: because of any dedication to brain related content. But in
Speaker 1: this one we get into some strange research being done
Speaker 1: with snails and memory and transferring memories from one animal
Speaker 1: to another. Hey, brain stuff, Lauren vogel Bomb. Here, memories
Speaker 1: are made by experience. For instance, you know that you
Speaker 1: like donuts because you've had possibly hundreds of delicious donuts
Speaker 1: in your lifetime. But what if you could have fond
Speaker 1: memories of donuts, not because you've ever had one before,
Speaker 1: but because somebody slipped you a transplanted donut memory. No,
Speaker 1: Jim Care is not in this movie, and it's not
Speaker 1: a movie. It's science. A team of researchers at U
Speaker 1: c l A has been the first to successfully transplant
Speaker 1: memory from one organism into another. The study published in
Speaker 1: issue of in euro the online journal of the Society
Speaker 1: for Neuroscience reports their success in using the genetic molecule
Speaker 1: ribonucleic acid, or RNA, to transplant a memory from one
Speaker 1: marine scale into another. The research team gave the memory
Speaker 1: donor snails a series of mild electric shocks to their
Speaker 1: tails over the course of two days. When threatened in
Speaker 1: this way, the snails retracted the fleshy flaps on the
Speaker 1: sides of their bodies called parapodia. Afterwards, when the researchers
Speaker 1: so much as tapped these snails, they withdrew their parapodia
Speaker 1: four around fifty seconds. And let's be frank here, these
Speaker 1: c snails are not particularly smart. They don't even have
Speaker 1: the type of nervous system that involves a brain. But
Speaker 1: the trauma of getting repeatedly shocked on the butt led
Speaker 1: them to become sense tized, which is a simple type
Speaker 1: of memory. By contrast, a control group of snails that
Speaker 1: never received the series of shocks only retracted their parapodia
Speaker 1: for about a second after being tapped by the researchers.
Speaker 1: And as one of my colleagues would say, here's where
Speaker 1: it gets crazy. Next, the sciencests extracted rona from the
Speaker 1: sensitized snails and injected it into seven snails that had
Speaker 1: not received shocks. Afterward, when tapped, these snails pulled in
Speaker 1: their parapodia for an average of forty seconds. David Glandsman,
Speaker 1: senior author of the study and professor of Integrative biology,
Speaker 1: Physiology and Neurobiology at U c l A, said in
Speaker 1: a press release, it's as though we transferred the memory.
Speaker 1: The researchers went on to put RNA from shocked snails
Speaker 1: into petree dishes containing bundles of neurons from snails that
Speaker 1: had not received the shocks. They found that this resulted
Speaker 1: in the neurons getting extremely excited when bathed in a
Speaker 1: chemical messenger that suggested an electric shock. Neurons from the
Speaker 1: unsensitized snails did not become near is excited. The research
Speaker 1: team concluded that this ability from memory to be transferred
Speaker 1: from one snail to another through r and A suggests
Speaker 1: that we know less than we think about where memories
Speaker 1: are stored. It's been assumed until recently that they are
Speaker 1: kept in synapses, of which each neuron contains thousands A.
Speaker 1: Glensman said, if memories were stored at synapsies, there's no
Speaker 1: way Our experiment would have worked. Instead, He suggests they
Speaker 1: might be kept in the nucleus of neurons. But this
Speaker 1: isn't just about annoying snails. The study authors believe this
Speaker 1: research could soon help patients with Alzheimer's disease or post
Speaker 1: traumatic stress disorder. Today's episode is based on the article
Speaker 1: Eternal Sunshine of the Snail Mind on housetof Works dot com,
Speaker 1: written by Jesselyn Shields. Brain Stuff is production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com,
Speaker 1: and it is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts
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