WIKIMEDIA, GENNY ANDERSONResearchers have transferred a memory from one snail to another via RNA, they report today (May 14) in eNeuro. If confirmed in other species, the finding may lead to a shift in scientists’ thinking about how memories are made—rather than cemented in nerve-cell connections, they may be spurred on by RNA-induced epigenetic changes.
“The study suggests that RNA populations are the missing link in the search for memory,” Bridget Queenan, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the study, writes in an email to The Scientist. “If circulating neural RNAs can transfer behavioral states and tendencies, orchestrating both the transient feeling and the more permanent memory, it suggests that human memory—just like mood—will only be explained by exploring the interplay between bodies and brains.”
For decades, researchers have tried to pinpoint how, when, and where memories form. In the 1940s, Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb proposed memories are made in the connections between neurons, called synapses, and stored as those connections grow stronger and more abundant. Experiments in the 1960s, however, suggested ...
