Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radios has Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're going to be embarking
Speaker 1: on a two part episode about the nature and physical
Speaker 1: basis of memory. So in the past we've explored the
Speaker 1: question where is my mind? We did an episode about this,
Speaker 1: I think a couple of years ago. Like, it seems
Speaker 1: obvious enough that cognition takes place in the brain, but
Speaker 1: this hasn't always been taken for granted. And today we're
Speaker 1: gonna look at a very strange narrative of twenty and
Speaker 1: some twenty one century research that asks a similar question
Speaker 1: about memories. What are memories made of? Like, if you
Speaker 1: have a memory of I don't know, You're going down
Speaker 1: the street and seeing Hulk Hogan stomping on an ice
Speaker 1: cream sandwich, is that stored exclusively within the brand sane?
Speaker 1: If so, how is it stored in the brain? And
Speaker 1: more importantly, for today's episode, can I eat your body
Speaker 1: and gain that memory for myself? Yeah? This is you know,
Speaker 1: this is actually a really tremendous question though of course
Speaker 1: it does touch on a number of mythical and fictional
Speaker 1: notions that we've touched on before over the years, such
Speaker 1: as can a google eat your brains and become you
Speaker 1: for a limited amount of time? Or cannon immortal swordsman
Speaker 1: cut off another immortal's head and gain their vital power. Uh,
Speaker 1: do you know the living dead really eat brains because
Speaker 1: it makes the pain of being dead go away? Is
Speaker 1: there anything to indo cannibalistic funeral rites you know, practiced
Speaker 1: by various cultures throughout history since ancient times? Or how
Speaker 1: about this, If Michael Caine loses a hand and receives
Speaker 1: a hand transplant from a murderer, does he become more
Speaker 1: likely to he himself murder? I assume that must be
Speaker 1: based on a real movie. But what Oliver Oliver Stone
Speaker 1: directed it? As a matter of fact, what's it called.
Speaker 1: I think it's called The Hand. But Michael Caine's ended up.
Speaker 1: He plays like a comic book artist. I think so that,
Speaker 1: you know, that's the other side of it is used. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's early Stone. It's not political. It's
Speaker 1: all about you know, people's hands coming off and being
Speaker 1: replaced by hand that then has the will of a
Speaker 1: killer within it, which I think has been explored in
Speaker 1: other horror properties as well. Um, it sounds like solid
Speaker 1: Michael Caine. Yeah. And it also gets into an idea
Speaker 1: that came up in our recent episode on yoga, the
Speaker 1: idea of of of memories being stored in one's body,
Speaker 1: which of course is a little more complicated. All this
Speaker 1: is all is more complicated when you consider the human situation.
Speaker 1: But a lot of what we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: in this episode is not dealing directly with with with
Speaker 1: human cognition and human memories, but what we can observe
Speaker 1: in simpler but also very important and informative organisms. Yes. Uh,
Speaker 1: though that doesn't mean that people haven't tried to extrapolate
Speaker 1: all kinds of things about about human memory from this research,
Speaker 1: and that will be part of the story too. This
Speaker 1: is going to be a mostly historical pair of episodes
Speaker 1: looking at controversial past research and linking it to more
Speaker 1: recent studies. And it's also going to be in two parts.
Speaker 1: As I said, so, I'd say it's it's important not
Speaker 1: to draw your conclusions until you've heard the whole thing.
Speaker 1: A significant part of what we're talking about today is
Speaker 1: going to be research that looked promising at one time
Speaker 1: but as widely regarded as as being on the wrong
Speaker 1: track today. Exactly, but still certainly there's a lot to
Speaker 1: learn by looking at these past cases. Absolutely. Uh So,
Speaker 1: the main human figure we're going to be looking at
Speaker 1: in the story today was an American psychologist named Dr
Speaker 1: James V. McConnell, who lived nineteen twenty five to nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety And I wanted to start off by mentioning several
Speaker 1: sources about McConnell's life and career that will be referring
Speaker 1: to in these episodes. One was an article about McConnell
Speaker 1: by the Michigan State University psychologist Mark Rilling that appeared
Speaker 1: in American Psychology Ist in nineteen called the Mystery of
Speaker 1: the Vanished Citations, uh And that title refers to a
Speaker 1: period where McConnell was doing a lot of very influential research,
Speaker 1: but today you don't see the citations of this research
Speaker 1: mentioned very much, and he's sort of exploring why that is.
Speaker 1: Another article, it was a great article called Memory in
Speaker 1: the Flesh in the Verge by R. L. Do Haim Ross,
Speaker 1: And also a couple of pieces in like two thousand
Speaker 1: ten and two thousand thirteen for the Journal of the
Speaker 1: American Psychological Association by a sociology professor named Larry Stern.
Speaker 1: That Verge article, by the way from and it's quite
Speaker 1: a good read. Yes it is so. James McConnell was
Speaker 1: born in Okamalgy, Oklahoma. I hope I'm saying that right,
Speaker 1: Okmalgy or Okmalgi. Yeah, and that sounds Oklahoma enough, I
Speaker 1: think okay uh in nineteen. He spent almost all of
Speaker 1: his professional career on faculty at the University of Michigan,
Speaker 1: beginning in nineteen fifty six after he got his PhD
Speaker 1: from the University of Texas and lasting in Hill his
Speaker 1: retirement in nineteen eight and from the sixties through the
Speaker 1: eighties he also served as a research psychologist at the
Speaker 1: Mental Health Research Institute of the University. So McConnell overall
Speaker 1: was a very controversial figure in American psychology for multiple
Speaker 1: reasons that we will explore throughout these episodes. Widely known
Speaker 1: as innovative, enthusiastic, humorous, but also perhaps his reckless, sometimes
Speaker 1: un serious, and undisciplined. One interesting fact about him that will,
Speaker 1: I think become more relevant as we go on is
Speaker 1: that early on before his academic career, he did some
Speaker 1: work in radio and television as a DJ and a
Speaker 1: scriptwriter before going into psychology, and of course this would
Speaker 1: prove valuable in a career as a public science communicator
Speaker 1: and something of a celebrity scientist. Now, apart from the
Speaker 1: research that we're going to be looking at today, I
Speaker 1: think McConnell was probably best known for founding a strange
Speaker 1: magazine called The Worm Runners Digest. I think one major
Speaker 1: problem many psychologists had with James McConnell during his life,
Speaker 1: UH was typified by the spirit of this journal, which
Speaker 1: published real reports of real scientific research. In some ways,
Speaker 1: it was kind of a clearing house for reports of
Speaker 1: research that wasn't yet in the It wasn't yet ready
Speaker 1: to be submitted to peer reviewed journals. So kind of
Speaker 1: scientists would submit uh, you know, worm training reports and
Speaker 1: things like that to this as as a preliminary measure.
Speaker 1: But then it would publish that real research UH and
Speaker 1: and real manuals for replication, right alongside bizarre jokes and
Speaker 1: poems and cartoons and hoaxes and satirical articles. So, for
Speaker 1: a few article titles cited by Larry Stern, one is
Speaker 1: the effects of physical torture on the learning and retention
Speaker 1: of nonsense syllables. One is called operant conditioning in the
Speaker 1: domestic darning needle Spina Farrika. So a lot of like
Speaker 1: weird psychology in jokes, sort of jokes about the field
Speaker 1: psychologists trying to write parodies of their own research and
Speaker 1: the and the problems they encountered within their sub fields. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: there's a very very specific audience in mind them. Yes. Uh.
Speaker 1: Larry Stern also writes that there were spoofs of Freudian theory,
Speaker 1: including quote some comments on the addition to the theory
Speaker 1: of psycho sexual development by Sigmund Fraud, which introduced the
Speaker 1: nasal stage occurring between the anal and phallic stages, in
Speaker 1: which the libido quote is localized primarily in the mucus
Speaker 1: linings of the nose, which I guess is a strange
Speaker 1: reminder that, you know, in the middle of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of psychology journals would still be
Speaker 1: dealing with a pretty significant contingent of Freudian trained psychoanalysts.
Speaker 1: But and I figured this would be of special interest
Speaker 1: to you. Robert McConnell actually was also a science fiction
Speaker 1: writer and a charter member of the Science Fiction Writers
Speaker 1: of America, which again I would say probably didn't help
Speaker 1: his professional reputation. Yes, perhaps not uh so from what
Speaker 1: I could find. His sci fi stories also often seemed
Speaker 1: to be humorous and aimed at parody of the fields
Speaker 1: that he worked in. For example, Rilling writes about McConnell's
Speaker 1: one of McConnell's stories called Learning Theory, published in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, and in this story quote, McConnell is the
Speaker 1: protagonist who is abducted during the preparation of a lecture
Speaker 1: on learning theory, into an interstellar lab ship to become
Speaker 1: a subject confined to a series of chambers that resembled
Speaker 1: the skinner box, tea maze, and lashly jumping stand. And
Speaker 1: I had to look up that last one. But the
Speaker 1: lastly jumping stand was an apparatus for the study of
Speaker 1: operant conditioning, and it gave a rat an option to
Speaker 1: jump over a gap to two different visual stimuli. One
Speaker 1: would offer a reward and one would cause the rat
Speaker 1: to fall into a net below. Okay, so not just
Speaker 1: another tool that was used in behavioral studies, right, So
Speaker 1: he's in this story he's writing about himself being it
Speaker 1: into the studies that people were doing on rats in
Speaker 1: the fifties, and I guess the sixties too. But picking
Speaker 1: up with Rillings description of the story quote, after first
Speaker 1: behaving according to the predictions of learning theory, McConnell realizes
Speaker 1: that he will be returned to ann Arbor if he
Speaker 1: misbehaves by violating the predictions of his captor's theory of learning.
Speaker 1: McConnell was an iconic last and his story is a
Speaker 1: spoof fun learning theory in nineteen sixty. So I think
Speaker 1: the idea is, uh, he's poking fun at the sort
Speaker 1: of the rain of conventional wisdom by saying that if
Speaker 1: he were a subject in alien psychological research, if he
Speaker 1: didn't confirm their pre existing theories, they basically throw him
Speaker 1: out and say he wasn't a valid research subject. Interesting.
Speaker 1: According to an obituary I found by some University of
Speaker 1: Michigan colleagues, McConnell was also a cultivator of orchids, as
Speaker 1: well as a lover of computers and poker, and known
Speaker 1: by many students for quote personal zest to joy in teaching,
Speaker 1: intellectual animation, infectious enthusiasm, and individualized attention that he brought
Speaker 1: to his classes. Uh and Rilling points out that while
Speaker 1: much of his cannibalistic memory transfer work that we're gonna
Speaker 1: be focusing on was later considered wrong and misguided, McConnell
Speaker 1: was actually a really important pioneer in research into invertebrate
Speaker 1: learning and memory, and that scientists today should be able
Speaker 1: to learn from both his successes and his failures. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to make an admission that I'm afraid I'm
Speaker 1: going to say something wrong in one of these episodes
Speaker 1: because I keep accidentally calling James McConnell Jerry O'Connell, who
Speaker 1: was not a psychologist. He was the guy in Scream Too,
Speaker 1: and he played the football player and Jerry McGuire No, no,
Speaker 1: I actually haven't seen Jerry McGuire um, But you've got
Speaker 1: some VHS t do I have some VHS tapes because
Speaker 1: I'm I'm saving them. I have to contribute them to
Speaker 1: the pyramid that is being built in the desert, because
Speaker 1: we do have to return all the Jerry's home. But yes,
Speaker 1: I have actually have not watched it. Well know, he
Speaker 1: was like a hunky dude in the nice but no
Speaker 1: different guy, not the actor Jerry O'Connell, James McConnell. So
Speaker 1: if I say, Jerry O'Connell, you've got to reach across
Speaker 1: the table and slap me, will will you? Will you
Speaker 1: keep this pledge? Um? I don't know if I feel
Speaker 1: like getting up to slap you, but I will try
Speaker 1: and jump in. Um. So. Dr McConnell explores some pretty
Speaker 1: radical ideas during his career. You know, one of them
Speaker 1: will be the primary focus for these episodes. But he
Speaker 1: also later wrote about the potential of using behavioral modification
Speaker 1: on criminals to enable their re entry into society. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: And he thought that this might be used to eliminate
Speaker 1: crime and mental illness altogether. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: enthusiasm in the mid century among the behaviorist school of
Speaker 1: psychology for this kind of like society revolutionizing potential of
Speaker 1: behavior modification. Right, And we have to go back to
Speaker 1: some of these character attributes we've touched on already, that
Speaker 1: he was when he was excited about an idea, he
Speaker 1: was very excited about it and infectious with his excitement.
Speaker 1: And he was something of a public figure and would
Speaker 1: engage is kind of a celebrity scientist. He could engage
Speaker 1: with science on a show biz level, not just on
Speaker 1: a research level, and in fact often maybe did so
Speaker 1: to the detriment of public expectations. He was accused by
Speaker 1: some colleagues of over hyping and over interpreting and over
Speaker 1: speculating from what research existed. So it's thought that this
Speaker 1: is the reason that and it's particularly some of these
Speaker 1: ideas that he was pushing in enthusiasm, he was pushing
Speaker 1: regarding a behavioralism, that this is what attracted the attention
Speaker 1: of a man by the name of Ted Kazinski. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which most people probably recognize that name. If not, you
Speaker 1: might know him by his moniker, the UNI Bomber. We
Speaker 1: were talking about this before we came in that, Like,
Speaker 1: I bet a lot of younger listeners out there don't
Speaker 1: even remember the UNI Bomber. I remember from when I
Speaker 1: was very young. I mean, it's also easy to only remember,
Speaker 1: you know, a few pictures here and there, remember that
Speaker 1: police sketch, and remember like a courtroom picture where you know,
Speaker 1: Kazinski looks, you know, completely unhinged, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, McConnell was one of his targets. Kazinski mailed
Speaker 1: his tenth bomb to Dr McConnell in an assassination attempt,
Speaker 1: and this was in nineteen five. UM he had at
Speaker 1: that time he was working with a graduate student assistant
Speaker 1: uh named I believe what is Nicholas Sueno, and so
Speaker 1: they're working together. They opened the package and triggered the explosion. Now,
Speaker 1: thankfully both individuals survived with only only minor injuries and
Speaker 1: mild hearing loss, as well as what sounds like some
Speaker 1: level of PTSD based on the experience, which I think
Speaker 1: is quite understandable. But but yeah, just a refresher on
Speaker 1: the UNI bomber for anyone who doesn't know or as
Speaker 1: a little foggy uh Ted Kazinski born ninety two was
Speaker 1: a was a former mathematics professor and mathematician who took
Speaker 1: two acts of murder and domestic terrorism to advance his manifesto,
Speaker 1: which was titled Industrial Society and Its Future, in which
Speaker 1: he heavily criticized his post Industrial Revolution society and he
Speaker 1: also criticized what he referred to as leftist psychology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's sometimes he can be kind of hard to pin
Speaker 1: down in terms of his ideology because he doesn't fit
Speaker 1: with a lot of the standard ideological kind of groupings
Speaker 1: you see with mass murderers and terrorists that are motivated
Speaker 1: by ideology. He was more of a kind of idiosyncratic
Speaker 1: lone wolf terrorist. But but he's sometimes referred to as
Speaker 1: like an anarchist primitivist. He wanted people to return to
Speaker 1: nature and reject modern technology and science, right, which I
Speaker 1: mean they're they're versions of that that of course, that
Speaker 1: are that many people listening to the show might agree with, uh,
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't resort to murder exactly. And I mean
Speaker 1: that's that's the big thing, just to drive home here,
Speaker 1: you know. He Yeah, he argued for this nature centric anarchism,
Speaker 1: and in his bombings he targeted individuals involved in modern
Speaker 1: type mostly individuals involved in modern technological advances. And that's
Speaker 1: why McConnell's work is sometimes hard to figure out, like
Speaker 1: why this attracted the attention of Kazinski because it doesn't
Speaker 1: quite seem to fit the profile at first glance. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The article I was reading by Mark Rilling identifies McConnell's
Speaker 1: public communication on TV and another media about behavior modification
Speaker 1: at use, uh, you know, in use in criminal justice
Speaker 1: and human behavior reform at the large scale, as the
Speaker 1: likely culprit in attracting Kazinski's hire. Yeah, because Kazinski did
Speaker 1: criticize modification of the human condition, especially behavioral modification, which
Speaker 1: McConnell had become an outspoken proponent of in the media,
Speaker 1: and Kazinski saw him as an advocate of society's attempts
Speaker 1: to change humans to fit the system rather than the reverse. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Between ninety nine teen, Ted Kaznski killed three people and
Speaker 1: injured twenty three. Uh. He was the target of an
Speaker 1: intense um search for his identity, but finally he was
Speaker 1: arrested in nineteen and remains in prison serving a life
Speaker 1: term as of this recording. Yeah. And fortunately both McConnell
Speaker 1: and and the student Sweeno survived the Attechnic and so
Speaker 1: McConnell lived several years after that. He passed away in nineteen.
Speaker 1: So this is just something about just a bizarre um
Speaker 1: you know, aspect of the overall story and just uh,
Speaker 1: certainly a historically noteworthy part of McConnell's biography. Uh, that
Speaker 1: he just ends up, you know, wandering into the path
Speaker 1: of of this individual and becomes part of the Kazynski
Speaker 1: story as well. Yeah, but that's not the main part
Speaker 1: of his life. We're going to be focusing on in
Speaker 1: these episodes. We're gonna be looking more at his research
Speaker 1: on memory, and specifically memory research with a group of
Speaker 1: flat worms known as plenaria. So should we take a
Speaker 1: quick break and then come back to talk about planarians. Yes,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and cut the episode right here. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. So before we look at the experiments of
Speaker 1: James McConnell and colleagues, we should meet a major character
Speaker 1: in this scientific narrative, which is a type of flat
Speaker 1: worm called planaria. Right now, for starters, Planaria, there is
Speaker 1: a genus planar area. But but but it's not what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here, is not just organisms within that genus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it can be a little confusing because there are multiple
Speaker 1: things called planaria. Planaria is also used to refer to
Speaker 1: a larger family of related flat worms, and most of
Speaker 1: the worms that are called planarians are outside the genus
Speaker 1: of Planaria, in classes in the class to Bellaria or
Speaker 1: the family Planaria. Day, So we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: this broader class of planarians. Yeah, the old you'll find
Speaker 1: them living in both fresh and salt water, in the water,
Speaker 1: but also on land. A terrestrial Planaria are found the
Speaker 1: soil or or damp areas or humid places. Some are
Speaker 1: even parasitic, but most feed on protozoans, tiny snails and worms,
Speaker 1: and they mostly feed at night. Mostly they're they're soft.
Speaker 1: They tend to be soft leaf leaf shaped creatures that
Speaker 1: range from three to fifteen millimeters, but they can reach
Speaker 1: longer lengths. They have two eyes, and those two eyes
Speaker 1: are often quite notable because they look like googly eyes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've probably seen these before in actual photos of these
Speaker 1: worms zoomed in their cross side. Uh. Some some of
Speaker 1: them have tentacles, They have of ventral mouth opening and
Speaker 1: no body cavity. They may swim via undulations or crawl
Speaker 1: like a slug. They are also simultaneous hymaphrodites, having both
Speaker 1: sexes within a single individual. Yet some utilize sexual reproductions
Speaker 1: and and some utilize a sexual reproduction and of course
Speaker 1: their legendary for their regenerative powers. Yes, and it's these
Speaker 1: regenerative powers that are going to play a central role
Speaker 1: in a lot of this research. Uh. And it may
Speaker 1: have played a role in your individual research and even
Speaker 1: science education growing up. Oh sure, yeah, maybe, I mean so,
Speaker 1: I mean you could not have a planarian highlander situation,
Speaker 1: you would have a real problem with trying to keep
Speaker 1: a planary in decapitated. That's right. Uh. And and to
Speaker 1: really drive this home, let's talk about just how amazing
Speaker 1: their regenerative powers are. Basically, they can be cut in
Speaker 1: half in each half will form into a fully formed individual.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's been estimated that a mere one two
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy nine of the organism can, once removed,
Speaker 1: regenerate into a fully formed individual. So we're talking total
Speaker 1: sourcer as apprentice territory here, and that's really not an overstatement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be like, you know, if you could chop
Speaker 1: my finger off and it would grow a whole new me. Yeah. Really,
Speaker 1: And that's I mean, that's amazing because we've we've talked
Speaker 1: on the show before about the regenerative p hours of
Speaker 1: of various vertebrate organisms. For example, you know, and it's
Speaker 1: impressive that a lizard co jettis in its tail and
Speaker 1: re mostly regrow that tail. Things of that nature. Many
Speaker 1: of the healing abilities of even the human body are
Speaker 1: pretty substantial when you really set back and and consider them.
Speaker 1: But this is this is something far beyond most of
Speaker 1: those examples. Yeah, I would say this goes even beyond
Speaker 1: the impressive examples we see in like amphibians, like salamanders.
Speaker 1: You can even cut their head in half, kind of
Speaker 1: like you started to cut them in half with a
Speaker 1: sword and then you got bored like around the neck. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can, you can. You can cut their head in
Speaker 1: half and then just stop and then they'll they'll develop
Speaker 1: two heads and live that way. In some cases, Uh,
Speaker 1: they have. There have been some very interesting experiments in
Speaker 1: how they regenerate in micro gravity as well. For instance,
Speaker 1: normally a two headed planaria is a rare occurrence in nature,
Speaker 1: but in one experiment, space exposed worms were far more
Speaker 1: likely developed a second head to the tune of one
Speaker 1: in fifteen worms. Uh. In amputating this worm within result
Speaker 1: in more two headed worms. And this is this is
Speaker 1: just one area where you know their their further study
Speaker 1: can help us understand their biology and uh it also
Speaker 1: help us better understand the effects of micro gravity on
Speaker 1: an organism. But of course, their regenerative powers in general
Speaker 1: continue to garner a great deal of research attention. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean the medical applications of regenerative biology itself are
Speaker 1: very important. Yeah, Worth noting that Darwin actually observed these
Speaker 1: amazing creatures as well. Uh, and their amazing ability. I
Speaker 1: will read a quick quote here from Charles Darwin. Alright,
Speaker 1: this is from a journal of researches into the natural
Speaker 1: history and geology of the countries visited during the voyage
Speaker 1: of HMS Beagle around the world. Quote. Having cut one
Speaker 1: of them transversely into two nearly equal parts in the
Speaker 1: course of a fortnight, both had the shape of perfect animals.
Speaker 1: I had, however, so divided the body that one of
Speaker 1: the halves contained both the inferior or orifices, and the
Speaker 1: other in consequence none In the course of twenty five
Speaker 1: days from the operation, the more perfect half could not
Speaker 1: have been distinguished from any other specimen. And there's more
Speaker 1: that you know here, obviously, But that's just a taste
Speaker 1: of his fascination with the organism itself, sitting in the
Speaker 1: Beagle cutting up worms, and and they've continued to fascinate
Speaker 1: researches as well. Uh. You know, for a number of reasons.
Speaker 1: Um as pointed out by a doctor only are Pagan
Speaker 1: author of the first brain. Uh. He pointed this out
Speaker 1: in a two thousand fourteen interview with futurism. There are
Speaker 1: other organisms with this kind of regenerative ability, but very
Speaker 1: few are quite as excellent at it as the planarian.
Speaker 1: And they also have a relatively complex nervous system, which
Speaker 1: contributes to their appeal, especially when you get into areas
Speaker 1: where you're talking about what can we learn from the
Speaker 1: from a planarian that we can then apply potentially in
Speaker 1: the future to human physiology. Now, just a few other
Speaker 1: quick fascinating facts about them. At least one variety produces
Speaker 1: a deadly U produces the deadly tetrodotoxin um. In general,
Speaker 1: their mouths emerge from a proboscis located halfway down their body.
Speaker 1: And those googly eyes sometimes described as cross eyes. Apparently
Speaker 1: nobody's exactly sure why that is the case. I will
Speaker 1: say the google eyes often look like an illustration, and
Speaker 1: they present a problem with the presentation of these planarians
Speaker 1: and the display the google eyes, because you can show
Speaker 1: a photo of them and it looks like somebody drew it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't look like a real world organism. It always,
Speaker 1: even to this day, it makes me think of Spy
Speaker 1: Versus Spy and Mad Magazine. They look like the the
Speaker 1: two Spies, the Black Spy and the White Spy from
Speaker 1: that cartoon. Yep, So that's the subject in a nutshell. Uh,
Speaker 1: But I imagine we should start turning our attention to
Speaker 1: some of the experiments. Right, So I would say the
Speaker 1: story begins with the psychological technique of classical conditioning. So
Speaker 1: the most common example of classical conditioning is Pavlov's dogs. Right.
Speaker 1: The Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, who lived eighteen forty nine
Speaker 1: and nineteen thirty six, was famously studying the process of
Speaker 1: digestion in dogs when he noticed that not only did
Speaker 1: the dogs begin to drool in the presence of food.
Speaker 1: That that would make sense, right, you put some food
Speaker 1: in front of a dog. The digestion process begins with
Speaker 1: the mental stimulation of the side of food. Right, you
Speaker 1: start producing saliva or drool in order to help you eat.
Speaker 1: It actually went beyond that. Pavlov observed that the dogs
Speaker 1: would start to drool as soon as they saw the
Speaker 1: lab assistant who usually fed them. So there's a physiological
Speaker 1: justification for producing extra saliva. When an animal sees food,
Speaker 1: the animal's body is preparing to eat. But Pavlov, since
Speaker 1: I was realizing that through repeated training, you could separate
Speaker 1: the stimulus and the response through one or more layers
Speaker 1: of abstraction. So, of course the lab assistant isn't food,
Speaker 1: but the dog comes to learn through repeated instances that
Speaker 1: every time it sees the assistant, it's about to get food.
Speaker 1: And thus the body prepares itself to eat and digest.
Speaker 1: And this was later done with all kinds of different things.
Speaker 1: With auditory cues such as a bell or a metronome,
Speaker 1: the dog, here's the sound. It knows the food is coming,
Speaker 1: and the body responds. And I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but like, this is something that helps define my relationship
Speaker 1: with my pet. Like I think about this all the
Speaker 1: time when observing my cat's relationship with our household environment.
Speaker 1: Absolutely I think about my dog's relationship with any stimulus
Speaker 1: such as sound or visual cues that may signal a
Speaker 1: walk is about to take place. So like the picking
Speaker 1: up of the keys, the putting on of the coach,
Speaker 1: that putting on of the shoes, all these different things
Speaker 1: are like start to trigger this powerful excitement reaction in
Speaker 1: the dog, even though none of them are are opening
Speaker 1: the door, leashing up, going out for a walk, right,
Speaker 1: none of them are in and of themselves the desired reward,
Speaker 1: but there are various bits of stimuli associated with that
Speaker 1: eventual reward of course. So yeah, we are constantly, even
Speaker 1: accidentally classically conditioning our pets whenever something that they're interested in,
Speaker 1: whether positively or negatively, is about to happen. If it
Speaker 1: happens repeatedly, you're probably training them, whether you want to
Speaker 1: be or not. Can is open, might be foods as
Speaker 1: the cat um, the rattle of foil, walking into the kitchen, um, etcetera. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: and this is widely acknowledged as one of the most
Speaker 1: useful discoveries in the history of experimental psychology. Of course,
Speaker 1: it works with both positive and negative stimuli. You can also,
Speaker 1: for example, administer a mildly painful shock every time somebody
Speaker 1: hears the Batman theme, and after enough repetition, the person
Speaker 1: or the animal is probably gonna freeze or WinCE when
Speaker 1: they hear the music, even if no shock is administered.
Speaker 1: A call back to our recent episode of Invention, our
Speaker 1: other podcast about the history the techno history of inventions,
Speaker 1: we did want on the turnspit Dog. If you're not aware,
Speaker 1: there was a time in the history, especially in Britain,
Speaker 1: where small dogs turned little wheels to keep the spit
Speaker 1: of meat turning by the fire. And one of the
Speaker 1: problems with using dogs for this particular bit of work
Speaker 1: is that they are smart and they pick up on
Speaker 1: these clues. So you they might pick up on these
Speaker 1: little signs that that inform them that some meat is
Speaker 1: going to be skewer, that they're the roast is gonna
Speaker 1: be had for dinner, or maybe just a big dinner
Speaker 1: is going to take place, and then the dog will
Speaker 1: run off and hide. Exactly what they should have found
Speaker 1: to turn those spits was like a large invertebrate that
Speaker 1: was not very good at learning through classical conditioning. Oh
Speaker 1: and just to keep things clear, because this is some
Speaker 1: thing that I used to confuse myself. What's the difference
Speaker 1: between these two terms, classical conditioning and operant conditioning. You've
Speaker 1: probably heard both of them. Uh, they're similar. They're both
Speaker 1: based on learning associations between two things. But the difference
Speaker 1: is classical conditioning pairs two external stimuli. For example, I
Speaker 1: show you a picture of Sean Connery and I give
Speaker 1: you an electric shock. So every time you know, if
Speaker 1: you do that enough, when you see the picture of
Speaker 1: Sean Connery, you'll win s or freeze, or react as
Speaker 1: if you're going to get a shock, even if you don't. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: operant conditioning associates a reward or a punishment with a
Speaker 1: behavior supplied by the subject. So, for example, if you
Speaker 1: jump three times, you get a bag of candy corn.
Speaker 1: Now we know perfectly well that these types of conditioning,
Speaker 1: classical conditioning operant conditioning work with a number of more
Speaker 1: complex life forms like rats, like dogs, like humans. But
Speaker 1: there was an interesting question that came up in the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, which was did it work for less complex
Speaker 1: life forms like say worms. All right, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to take one more break, but we'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Thank alright, we're back, alright. So we've been
Speaker 1: discussing classical conditioning, behavioral conditioning, and the fact that this
Speaker 1: we we know this works in more complex life forms
Speaker 1: like mammals, rats, dogs, humans, but does it work in
Speaker 1: less complex life forms like worms and other invertebrates. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, the answer to this question was pretty
Speaker 1: well understood, and that answer was no. Invertebrates could not
Speaker 1: learn the way that rats and monkeys and other mammals
Speaker 1: could mark. Rilling makes this point at length in his article,
Speaker 1: writing that the widely held view, especially among zoologists and
Speaker 1: psychologists who were not experts directly in animal behavior, was
Speaker 1: that invertebrates had no capacity for internal memory states, and
Speaker 1: the only thing that they that they could do that
Speaker 1: would even a approximate learning might come from temporary changes
Speaker 1: in body tissue. Really quotes a leading textbook of comparative
Speaker 1: psychology at the time, I think it's from the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties on a question of whether invertebrates can learn associations
Speaker 1: through conditioning and the passage reads experience may temporarily alter
Speaker 1: the form of behavior by inducing local tissue change, but
Speaker 1: such changes are wiped out by subsequent events and have
Speaker 1: no permanent altering effect. Uh. It was also the opinion
Speaker 1: of a contemporary researcher in the nineteen fifties I think
Speaker 1: named Donald Jensen quote that no invertebrate, no matter how complex,
Speaker 1: is capable of showing true associative learning. So that's the
Speaker 1: consensus invertebrates can't learn. As for this distinction they're making
Speaker 1: about true learning versus tissue change, I think the distinction
Speaker 1: here is that, like if a worm or an insect
Speaker 1: could be conditioned to go left rather than right in
Speaker 1: a maze. It might only be because, for example, the
Speaker 1: conditioning process had made the legs or the wings or
Speaker 1: something on one side of the body stronger. Uh. The
Speaker 1: bottom line was that animals without backbones cannot truly learn
Speaker 1: the same way animals like us can. You couldn't have
Speaker 1: a Pavlov's worm or a Pavlov's crab. Though the authors
Speaker 1: of the textbook quoted by Rilling make exactly one exception.
Speaker 1: They admit that this rule might not apply to planaria.
Speaker 1: But of course, McConnell, as usual, was sort of disposition
Speaker 1: alle opposed to the conventional wisdom. He was something of
Speaker 1: an iconoclast, and he did not accept the idea in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties that invertebrates could not learn. He wanted
Speaker 1: to find out if worms could be trained. Could he
Speaker 1: become a worm tamer. So here we move on into
Speaker 1: the first stage of this research history, the worm conditioning.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen fifty three McConnell was in graduate studies
Speaker 1: at the University of Texas and UH. Then this year
Speaker 1: and some of the following years he he collaborated with
Speaker 1: another researcher named Robert Thompson to demonstrate that planarians could
Speaker 1: be classically conditioned, and the basic set up here involved
Speaker 1: learning of responses to light light stimuli. Again, most of
Speaker 1: them are going to be nocturnal. Uh, so light is
Speaker 1: going to play an important role in their behavior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and certainly yeah through their you know, day night cycles
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. So they can detect a light.
Speaker 1: They have the ability to to tell when a light
Speaker 1: is being flashed. So planaria usually live, uh, at least
Speaker 1: the planaria they were working with usually live in aquatic
Speaker 1: environments and they move from one place to another by
Speaker 1: gliding across the bottom surface of a pool, usually along
Speaker 1: slime trails that they deposit as they move. So McConnell
Speaker 1: and Thompson put together a test with a foot long
Speaker 1: pool of water in which they would deposit a planarian
Speaker 1: and then the worm could glide from one end to
Speaker 1: the pool to the other. Then, for the conditioning groups,
Speaker 1: McConnell and Thompson would train the worms by flashing a
Speaker 1: light above the water, paired with an electric shock applied
Speaker 1: to the whole pool to the water and the conditioned
Speaker 1: responses the researchers were looking for in response to the light.
Speaker 1: After training were contraction of the worm's body and turning
Speaker 1: of the of the direction, and when the behavior of
Speaker 1: these trained planaria was compared with control groups, they found
Speaker 1: that while the planarian learning effect was not extremely strong,
Speaker 1: it was undeniably present. The condition worms showed an increase
Speaker 1: in contraction in response to the light from from about
Speaker 1: two percent in the first fifty trials to about ten
Speaker 1: percent in the last fifty trials, and turns started at
Speaker 1: a rate of about in response to light, but increased
Speaker 1: throughout the test period to thirty five percent after conditioning. So,
Speaker 1: as you can see, the planarian probably does not learn
Speaker 1: it nearly the efficiency of a mammal like a rat
Speaker 1: or a dog or an orangutan, but these nevertheless are
Speaker 1: significant changes. So, however weak, some learning was clearly taking place.
Speaker 1: And as a as a modern note, just to be clear,
Speaker 1: the established wisdom about invertebrates being unable to learn through
Speaker 1: association was pretty much completely wrong, and planaria were not
Speaker 1: the only exception. I was looking at one paper by
Speaker 1: Hawkins and burn From published in Cold Springs Harbor Perspectives
Speaker 1: Perspectives in biology called associate of Learning and Invertebrates, and
Speaker 1: they say that rudimentary forms of associative learning are found
Speaker 1: basically throughout the animal kingdom. One commonly studied example used
Speaker 1: in invertebrate learning and memory research is the California sea
Speaker 1: hair or applies a Californica. Almost had applies a californication californica.
Speaker 1: So it's a huge sea slug. I was looking this off.
Speaker 1: It could barely be up to seventy five centimeters long
Speaker 1: and way up to about seven kilograms or fifteen pounds.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a real mother of a sea slug.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine trying to pick up a fifteen hound
Speaker 1: sea slug? No? No, I mean one scarcely imagines it
Speaker 1: coming out of the water, right, But I can't help
Speaker 1: just because we're talking about something that they see hair,
Speaker 1: I always think of them behaving and rabbit like behavior,
Speaker 1: you know, or even delivering Easter eggs. Well, one also
Speaker 1: thinks about the sea monster that was popular on medieval
Speaker 1: and Renaissance maps, the sea hare. I relieve I talked
Speaker 1: about Chet Manduser with the sea the sea hare, yes,
Speaker 1: or I talked with chet Mandouser about the sea hare. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's one of the fun things about sea monsters is
Speaker 1: that we have all these things that are sort of
Speaker 1: name have the same name, like a sea hair, a
Speaker 1: sea lion, etcetera. But in the history of sea monsters,
Speaker 1: pretty much every creature that was known to reside on
Speaker 1: the surface had a double in the deep. Right, the
Speaker 1: medieval and Renaissance map sea hair has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the sea here. It was not a slug. It
Speaker 1: had fuzzy bunny ears, and you could have a velveteen
Speaker 1: sea hair and it would be very sad. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so this sea hare is a giant sea slug, and
Speaker 1: experiments show that it can learn associate sans, for example,
Speaker 1: a conditioned retraction of the gill and siphon organs that
Speaker 1: strengthened by noxious stimuli like electric shocks to the tail.
Speaker 1: So while learning responses are going to vary according to
Speaker 1: a creature's nero anatomy, there appears to be no general
Speaker 1: rule against invertebrate learning. Okay, that's good to know heading forward.
Speaker 1: So it's not just this idea that like all the
Speaker 1: eggs are in this one basket for invertebrate learning, only
Speaker 1: the planarians can learn. No, that is not the case.
Speaker 1: We We got some smart sea hairs, relatively smart but
Speaker 1: again to emphasize, this was the opposite of the conventional
Speaker 1: wisdom leading into the nineteen fifties UH, and to some degree,
Speaker 1: even after research demonstrating that there was invertebrate learning like,
Speaker 1: consensus among experts at the time resisted the idea of
Speaker 1: true invertebrate learning even after some published studies. One example
Speaker 1: cited by Rilling concerns a response after McConnell and colleagues
Speaker 1: seemed to indicate that the condition learning they could elicit
Speaker 1: in Planaria had to sustained effect that the memory associations
Speaker 1: lasted not just for hours, not just for days, but
Speaker 1: literally for for months at a time. I think they
Speaker 1: set up to four months. In response to this, UH,
Speaker 1: a renowned zoologist specializing in invertebrates named Libby Hyman said
Speaker 1: apparently said multiple times, no, that just can't be, and
Speaker 1: argued that maybe a planarian could remember something for like
Speaker 1: five minutes or so, but the memory retention for weeks
Speaker 1: or months was just unthinkable. But we already see some
Speaker 1: things at work here in UH in McConnell's story. So
Speaker 1: Rilling points out that while these results did bear out,
Speaker 1: and UH he thinks did generally demonstrate planarian learning and
Speaker 1: and showed something that is real and true. You could
Speaker 1: already see some of McConnell's methodological shortcomings at work. For example,
Speaker 1: he and Thompson did not use any kind of automatic
Speaker 1: measuring of the flatworm responses, but instead use the more
Speaker 1: traditional method of quote naturalistic observation, which I think means
Speaker 1: that they just watch to see what happened. You can
Speaker 1: probably guess why psychologists today try to find ways not
Speaker 1: to rely on experiment or is just eyebawling it when
Speaker 1: making a judgment about what happened. Uh, You're you're way
Speaker 1: more subject to experiment or bias this way. You want to,
Speaker 1: if possible, come up with an automatic method, right, because
Speaker 1: I mean, ironically, what you're dealing with when you're just
Speaker 1: dealing with observations as you are of course dealing with memory. Um,
Speaker 1: even if certainly if you're making notes about what you're
Speaker 1: seeing as you're seeing it, you're still having to rely
Speaker 1: then on your memory of the observation far better and
Speaker 1: you know, far more reliable to be able to point
Speaker 1: to say measurements yeah, yeah, done by a machine or something.
Speaker 1: Have some kind of method that's not just your subjective judgment,
Speaker 1: of what you just saw, being able to say this
Speaker 1: organism moved, you know, however far have left in this experiment,
Speaker 1: and then in a second experiment the same thing definitely occur. Yes, uh.
Speaker 1: And I want to be clear that like this doesn't
Speaker 1: experiment men or bias doesn't have to result from experimenters
Speaker 1: trying to trick anyone or being trying to commit conscious
Speaker 1: fraud for their results. They can be doing their honest
Speaker 1: best to try to represent things accurately. But still, you know,
Speaker 1: observation is somewhat subjective. You're going to honestly believe you
Speaker 1: saw something differently than somebody else did, or you know,
Speaker 1: our observations and our memories are not perfect, and they're
Speaker 1: highly influenced by what we want to see or expect
Speaker 1: to see. Also, Rilling points out that McConnell and Thompson's
Speaker 1: graduate advisor here was a comparative psychologist named M. E. Bitterman,
Speaker 1: who was critical of both students for not being careful enough,
Speaker 1: for example, not including a control group that were exposed
Speaker 1: to both shocks and light flashes but unpaired from each other,
Speaker 1: to more firmly establish a causal link for the for
Speaker 1: the conditioning process itself. But what if they had gotten
Speaker 1: both flashes and shocks and they just weren't linked the
Speaker 1: same way they were in the in the test group,
Speaker 1: and they apparently didn't do that. And so Rilling seems
Speaker 1: to see this as characteristic of McConnell's career as a whole. Uh.
Speaker 1: To quote from him in a summary passage, quote, McConnell,
Speaker 1: an innovator, raced from one exciting phenomenon to the next
Speaker 1: without comprehensive experimental analysis or adequate controls. McConnell's controls were
Speaker 1: often developed as a response to his critics. McConnell's students
Speaker 1: and other scientists were left to the task of cleaning
Speaker 1: up after McConnell by adding the control groups that he omitted.
Speaker 1: And I think it's easy to see how this kind
Speaker 1: of thing can be at at the same time very
Speaker 1: uh winning and exciting, especially to maybe the general public
Speaker 1: and you know, publications writing about his exciting and strange
Speaker 1: and counterintuitive new research, but also really irritating to appears
Speaker 1: in the field. If you're vaulting from one flashy, controversial,
Speaker 1: exciting discovery to another without taking the time to slow
Speaker 1: down and be sure you're on firm ground after each stop, right,
Speaker 1: because the ideal process. If the study comes out and
Speaker 1: there's some sort of problem with it, than than you know,
Speaker 1: the others in the field chime in. There's a sort
Speaker 1: of amount of course correction that takes place. You go
Speaker 1: back to the drawing board, try to figure out how
Speaker 1: you went wrong. Yeah, may yeah, maybe take a complete
Speaker 1: step or two backwards. You don't just keep going along
Speaker 1: this line because you know that there is gold on
Speaker 1: the other end. But at the same time, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can totally understand the temptation to do it that way.
Speaker 1: It sounds so much more exciting and than trying to
Speaker 1: buckle down and be super sure and super rigorous about
Speaker 1: what you think you already proved. Well. In this we
Speaker 1: get into something we've discussed them the show before about
Speaker 1: just the nature of scientific inquiry. Like it's one of
Speaker 1: these things that in some ways it is very much
Speaker 1: like how the human mind works and how humans have
Speaker 1: always solved problems. You can find, you know, examples of
Speaker 1: what is essentially scientific inquiry, certainly in in in prehistoric
Speaker 1: people's But at the same time, there are aspects of
Speaker 1: scientific inquiry that defy, uh, what it is to be
Speaker 1: a human problem solver that that that perfect the method
Speaker 1: in ways that don't make sense just within the confines
Speaker 1: of you know, you know, minute to minute human experience exactly.
Speaker 1: Trial and error comes naturally. But we're way too prone
Speaker 1: to rely on heuristics, you know, to to use our
Speaker 1: sort of standard day to day trial and error judgment
Speaker 1: for real scientific investigation, because usually we only need one
Speaker 1: or two examples of something going right for us to
Speaker 1: derive a rule from it. And one or two examples
Speaker 1: is not you know, that's still an anecdote scientifically. I
Speaker 1: here's an example from my my life as a parent.
Speaker 1: Um My son at an early age was enthralled by
Speaker 1: claw machines like pizza parlors and um and whatnot. And
Speaker 1: so the first time I let him try it, I said, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's a quarter, you can try it. And I was thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: he'll learn a good lesson. You know, you won't pick
Speaker 1: anything up with the claws, and I'll see this is
Speaker 1: a tricky machine made exclusively to take his money by
Speaker 1: tempting when with the idea that he'll win a cheap prize.
Speaker 1: And then he wins a cheap prize the first time, right,
Speaker 1: So I instantly set the wrong lesson. And then there
Speaker 1: was another case like shortly thereafter, or maybe a little
Speaker 1: mong later, but he had some credits at some sort
Speaker 1: of parlor as part of a children's birthday party. Did
Speaker 1: it again, won a prize, and so now it's ruined
Speaker 1: like to the two prizes makes a rule of that
Speaker 1: claw machines are where you get cheap toys, and the
Speaker 1: trickery is you know, somewhat lost on him at this
Speaker 1: at this point anyway, Oh no, I mean that kind
Speaker 1: of learning. I've actually wondered before if that could feature
Speaker 1: into and maybe as far as we know, it already does,
Speaker 1: but could in the future feature into a a more
Speaker 1: insidious type of slot machine. It's a more perfect gambling
Speaker 1: addiction creator and money extractor. And what how it would
Speaker 1: simply work is it's got a camera on there with
Speaker 1: facial recognition, and it can recognize if you've played a
Speaker 1: slot machine in this casino before, and if you haven't
Speaker 1: it's and it's your first time. It gives you a
Speaker 1: small payout on your first go. Yeah, I give you
Speaker 1: that that that that first time user beginner luck, but
Speaker 1: also give you false expectations about what's playing a slot
Speaker 1: machine is all about exactly. But I hope I didn't
Speaker 1: just give ideas to some really insidious designer there, right,
Speaker 1: because to be sure to be clear, and we certainly
Speaker 1: did a couple of episodes and slot machines in the past.
Speaker 1: A slot machine's purpose is to take your money, and
Speaker 1: the slot machine playing experience is the loss of money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the slot machine is not designed to help you win big.
Speaker 1: If you want to play them, you should understand that
Speaker 1: you are paying for an entertaining experience and that's the
Speaker 1: best case scenario. All right, we got we got a
Speaker 1: little off topic there, but it's just as well because
Speaker 1: we've kind of hit our time for this part of
Speaker 1: the inquiry. We're gonna be back in the next episode
Speaker 1: to continue you this discussion of planarians to what extent
Speaker 1: can they can they learn? But also we're going to
Speaker 1: get into this other area about the absorption of another
Speaker 1: worm's memory. Is it possible, uh, through cannibalism? Through cannibalism,
Speaker 1: And then how does McConnell get into trouble based on
Speaker 1: his reported findings, and then where do we go from
Speaker 1: here in the modern age? In the meantime, if you
Speaker 1: want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. Heading over to Stuff to Blow your Mind
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Speaker 1: them all. You will also find them all at any
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Speaker 1: to be. We just asked that you subscribe and that
Speaker 1: you leave a nice review, leave us some stars and
Speaker 1: or a nice comment, because this helps us out in
Speaker 1: the long run. If you want to check out other
Speaker 1: shows that were involved in First of all, there's Invention.
Speaker 1: We've mentioned that one before on the show already, and uh,
Speaker 1: this is a journey through human techno history. Find it
Speaker 1: an Invention pod dot com or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: We've mentioned the second oil age that is out as well,
Speaker 1: if you want to a short form of fiction horror
Speaker 1: fiction exploration throughout your holidays. Oh and I should also
Speaker 1: note if you were interested in Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind merchandise, we still have the old T shirt store
Speaker 1: and I am to understand that there is going to
Speaker 1: be a sale of some sort coming up. Uh, you
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Speaker 1: out definitely by all the merch uh huge thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
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