BrainStuff Classics: Are We Moving Closer to 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'?

We build memories through our experiences. But what if we could transfer memories to other people? It's happening -- in snails. Learn more in this classic episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://animals.howstuffworks.com/marine-life/eternal-sunshine-snail-mind.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hi,
brain Stuff, I'm Lauren vogel Bomb, and this is a
classic brain Stuff episode. You know, for a show called
brain Stuff, we don't spend a whole lot of time
talking about the brain. The show got its name because
the original host and writer, who you might have heard
on earlier episodes, was a guy named Marshall Brain, not

(00:23):
because of any dedication to brain related content. But in
this one we get into some strange research being done
with snails and memory and transferring memories from one animal
to another. Hey, brain stuff, Lauren vogel Bomb. Here, memories
are made by experience. For instance, you know that you

(00:45):
like donuts because you've had possibly hundreds of delicious donuts
in your lifetime. But what if you could have fond
memories of donuts, not because you've ever had one before,
but because somebody slipped you a transplanted donut memory. No,
Jim Care is not in this movie, and it's not
a movie. It's science. A team of researchers at U
c l A has been the first to successfully transplant

(01:08):
memory from one organism into another. The study published in
issue of in euro the online journal of the Society
for Neuroscience reports their success in using the genetic molecule
ribonucleic acid, or RNA, to transplant a memory from one
marine scale into another. The research team gave the memory

(01:28):
donor snails a series of mild electric shocks to their
tails over the course of two days. When threatened in
this way, the snails retracted the fleshy flaps on the
sides of their bodies called parapodia. Afterwards, when the researchers
so much as tapped these snails, they withdrew their parapodia
four around fifty seconds. And let's be frank here, these

(01:49):
c snails are not particularly smart. They don't even have
the type of nervous system that involves a brain. But
the trauma of getting repeatedly shocked on the butt led
them to become sense tized, which is a simple type
of memory. By contrast, a control group of snails that
never received the series of shocks only retracted their parapodia
for about a second after being tapped by the researchers.

(02:12):
And as one of my colleagues would say, here's where
it gets crazy. Next, the sciencests extracted rona from the
sensitized snails and injected it into seven snails that had
not received shocks. Afterward, when tapped, these snails pulled in
their parapodia for an average of forty seconds. David Glandsman,
senior author of the study and professor of Integrative biology,

(02:34):
Physiology and Neurobiology at U c l A, said in
a press release, it's as though we transferred the memory.
The researchers went on to put RNA from shocked snails
into petree dishes containing bundles of neurons from snails that
had not received the shocks. They found that this resulted
in the neurons getting extremely excited when bathed in a
chemical messenger that suggested an electric shock. Neurons from the

(02:57):
unsensitized snails did not become near is excited. The research
team concluded that this ability from memory to be transferred
from one snail to another through r and A suggests
that we know less than we think about where memories
are stored. It's been assumed until recently that they are
kept in synapses, of which each neuron contains thousands A.
Glensman said, if memories were stored at synapsies, there's no

(03:20):
way Our experiment would have worked. Instead, He suggests they
might be kept in the nucleus of neurons. But this
isn't just about annoying snails. The study authors believe this
research could soon help patients with Alzheimer's disease or post
traumatic stress disorder. Today's episode is based on the article

(03:43):
Eternal Sunshine of the Snail Mind on housetof Works dot com,
written by Jesselyn Shields. Brain Stuff is production of I
Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com,
and it is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts
from my heart Radio. Visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.