Memories may be stored outside the brain

Memories are stored in your brain, right? You learn something and it gets encoded in some configuration of chemicals in you head. Common knowledge. Not so fast.

I have often wondered how some animals can remember spawning grounds or migration locals without ever having been there. Instinct has always been an unexplained phenomena for me. A recent study I read about has now opened a can of worms.

Michael Levin and Tal Shomrat, at Tufts University have performed an interesting study.
Normally flatworms will shy away from lighted areas and circle around probing for danger before eventually honing in on a food source. They used a punishment/reward training method to train a group of flatworms to recognize a particular surface as safe and containing food. These worms would go right for the food source right away, now knowing where the food was. They used these worms because, while simple life forms, they still have a brain and nervous system.

One other thing flatworms can do is regenerate. After training the worms, they cut off their heads and waited the two weeks it took to grow them back. They then put the worms back in the test environment. These worms were able to hone in on the food with the same accuracy as they did before the surgery! They effectively regrew this trained response from DNA within their bodies.

Here's the National Geographic report:
newswatch.nationalgeographic.com...

This could be something unique to their regenerative ability. Like there is some sort of system that records the state of all bodily cells, a back-up copy, if you will. I'm no expert. But it does offer very strong evidence of literal genetic memory, in my opinion.

Given that what we previously thought of as "junk" DNA has been discovered to have an actual function. I believe in RNA replication specifically, if I remember correctly. I wonder if the day will come when we can learn through DNA resequencing.

I've posted in the past claims from a neurosurgeon about the ability to store memory outside the brain, and was met with many replies of "hogwash." I'm not certain they were qualified to speak on the matter, but this is publicly accessible after all.

reply to post by centhwevir1979


I think there is enough research now to support earnest consideration for some level of genetic memory. I will see if I can dig more up tomorrow.

For those that believe in an afterlife of any type, our memories must be stored in our soul rather than in the brain.

Every religion on the face of the planet has an afterlife. If the memories die at the person's death then there can be no afterlife.

I am guessing that those who state it is all hogwash have not considered this point as yet. Interesting times for them as they contemplate this.

P

Yea, because amnesia after organic brain damage is part of your soul taking a vacation, and alzheimers is the devil... ooookay.

reply to post by pheonix358


I'm not sure I go for a concept of a "soul", but genetic memory could, in theory, be passed on through mitochondrial DNA. This would pass on many, many generations of memories/knowledge, to some degree.

I have read some articles claiming this could be the root of reincarnation memories. Fringe articles, with little physical evidence. I try to keep an open mind though, and if info can be kept in and passed on through DNA, then it would be possible.

I don't know how a soul would tie in with genes and procreation. If it exists at all, I would look more toward some sort of neuro-electric explanation.

Then again, thinking outside the box, if the "essence" or core of what makes you you was stored in DNA then that could be considered a soul, in some fashion. It at least might start to explain why we think we are more than a single collection of cells and material. The soul would be a meta-person, more than just this one, in this line of reasoning.

Unfortunately I have not seen anyway to epirically test for a soul, as you use the term. That feels like more of philisophical conversation.

The above article above shows hard scientific method based evidence of genetic memory.

This theory has been around for a long time.

Before WWII , a bird called the blue tit had learned to tear the cap off milk bottles. It took years for this trick to spread to all the birds around Europe.

During the war, milk deliveries were discontinued. A few generations of birds passed before it resumed again. Once milk deliveries started again, all the blue tits almost instantly knew how to tear the cap off.

books.google.com... &sa=X&ei=Oy3qUdSxKqemygGsr4C4BA&ved=0CEAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=BLUE%20TIT%20MEMORY%20WAR&f=false

reply to post by Daughter2


These are the kind of stories I mean when I wrote about instinct. How can that be possible? This study, and others like it, may start to answer that very question.

Maybe one day we will find there is a physical link, passed on through DNA, to acquired skills/knowledge.
The flatworms are a good start, as I see it. They cut their heads off. Hard to deny some form of memory was stored elsewhere.

after death your body becomes fuel to the physical world as your essence all those electric impulses cannot be dissolved by earth they become other energies that fuel the stars without your body the electrochemicals of your brain no longer apply it is then just dissipating raw energy. IDK what it means but it happens to us all

I've always believed I am not my body, Ive always viewed it as Car and Driver type of situation.

It has been suggested before that the brain could be a quantum computer, doing all the calculations in higher dimensions.

Originally posted by QuantriQueptidez
Yea, because amnesia after organic brain damage is part of your soul taking a vacation, and alzheimers is the devil... ooookay.

Perhaps the brain is a quantum processor receiving its information from elsewhere, when the hardware gets damaged the signal or the interpretations of it get muddled.

should look at Theoretical physicist Roger Penrose work on the matter suggest the brain could work in sych a manner.

Originally posted by Daughter2
Before WWII , a bird called the blue tit had learned to tear the cap off milk bottles. It took years for this trick to spread to all the birds around Europe.

During the war, milk deliveries were discontinued. A few generations of birds passed before it resumed again. Once milk deliveries started again, all the blue tits almost instantly knew how to tear the cap off.

The story is a bit more complex than that, and it is worth knowing that:
- the British Studies showed that the learned behaviour was made from other local birds,
- the learned behaviour was patchy even within Britain, showing that it is not some "100th monkey effect" (otherwise all British blue tits would know it)
- the learned behaviour was LOCAL, in that different regions of Britain would have blue tits opening bottles in different ways, and preferring different colors of the lids to attack, showing again that it is not some "100th monkey effect" (otherwise all British blue tits would know it)
- and it is also found with a google search that the "learned" blue tits could EASILY fly across the English Channel to "invade" Holland with their knowledge.
- and another reference shows the maximum observed life span of a blue tit to be 9 years 9 months, so the "originals all died out" claim by Sheldrake is also bunkum.

...and that Sheldrake, who asserts the magical spontaneous effect in Holland in his 1987 work, puts forward not a single verifiable reference that somebody could check.

It seems that all the verifiable checkable resources show a perfectly ordinary effect at work,
and the non verifiable "allegorical" works that you cannot double check for yourself suggest something magically extraordinary.

Why do you think this is?

1. Humans are not flatworms.
2. Humans are not birds either.

The study may have indicated not all memories are stored in the brain, but, the brain is only PART of the entire nervous system of any animal.
Some memories may very well be stored within the greater nervous system, ie; muscle memory, for one.

Yes, we are not entirely tabula rasa, a blank slate, at birth.
We've an entire autonomic system that's part of our mechanical programming that we need not think about, though we can consciously control to some extent like breathing, heart rate, etc.
There's also hereditary facility for language. We've the hardware to create complex sounds, but, we've also the programming that allows us to learn any language from birth and express complex abstracts.

Over time there are indeed some things coded into our genes, yes.
No one, however, should be fooled into thinking if there were a way to regrow our heads that we'd still be the same person were it possible and such was done.
It'd be back to day one baby if a head could be regrown.

Originally posted by pheonix358
For those that believe in an afterlife of any type, our memories must be stored in our soul rather than in the brain.

Every religion on the face of the planet has an afterlife. If the memories die at the person's death then there can be no afterlife.

I am guessing that those who state it is all hogwash have not considered this point as yet. Interesting times for them as they contemplate this.

P

You erroneously assume that memories and personality are equal to awareness. Memories do not need to persist after death for there to be an afterlife. Only awareness.

reply to post by kmb08753


How do flatworms survive without food and water for two weeks while growing a new head (and mouth)?

reply to post by angrysniper

You erroneously assume that memories and personality are equal to awareness. Memories do not need to persist after death for there to be an afterlife. Only awareness.

I disagree. The memories and personality continuously add to awareness.

My personal view is that the combination of soul, brain and body make up an entity. At reincarnation a soul gets a new brain and body. Every reincarnation is different not only for the experiences but also for the gifts and challenges that every body / brain combination gives us.

To put it perhaps very simply, awareness is awareness of our surroundings and to do that you have to know your surroundings and that uses the application of memory. To suggest that the soul could even function without memory is unrealistic.

P

Here is an article that supports what you are saying OP, it involves transplanted organs. I had heard of people with transplants having new and odd memories. www.bibliotecapleyades.net...

From the article

However, living systems theory explicitly posits that all living cells possess "memory" and "decider" functional subsystems within them.4 Moreover, the recent integration of systems theory with the concept of energy (termed dynamical energy systems theory) provides compelling logic that leads to the prediction that all dynamical systems store information and energy to various degrees.

Here is another article about heart transplant recipients, not sure about the source.. www.naturalnews.com...

Many mammals have an inbuilt fear of snakes and spiders.

How is that fear programmed into DNA I wonder?

Great topic OP!

Have you heard of the Dutch cardiologist Dr Pim Van Lommel? He did a broad scientific study on the non-locality of consciousness, involving around 400 people who were brain-dead during cardiac arrest. Here is a very interesting interview with him (his book on the topic is a must read):

interview Dr Pim Van Lommel

He describes the brain as a transmitter and receiver of consciousness. Much like a radio. Consciousness is non-local, or basically everywhere in the universe at the same time (sort of like gravity). The brain does not produce consciousness. After researching several other studies by open-minded scientists in different fields, I am absolutely convinced of this. Every mystery about consciousness, memory, ESP, etc becomes much less mysterious once you have grasped this concept.

Mark my words: This will, in time, become the new paradigm.

Call me crazy, but I'm leaning more and more towards the theory that our memories are stored in some sort of "global consciousness field". Or some sort of field which extends outside of our physical body, whether global or not.