Scientists Transferred Memories From One Snail to Another. Someday, It Could Be People

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So, it’s impressive that researchers from UCLA were able to transfer memories of being shocked between marine snails. Even more impressive? That early research may someday pave the way for similar processes in humans.

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In the study, published Monday in the journal eNeuro, snails in one group were trained to respond to a stimulus — in this case, a shock to the tail (animal lovers, don’t fear — the shock didn’t hurt the snails. It just triggered a defensive curl reflex, sort of like snatching your hand away from a hot stove). At first, the snails would only curl for a few seconds. But through repeated shocks, the researchers trained them to curl for longer, up to about 50 seconds.

Next, the team took some ribonucleic acid (RNA), which forms proteins based on cells’ DNA, from nerve tissue in the upper abdomen of trained snails and injected it into the untrained snails’ necks to get to their circulatory system. When they were shocked, the snails that weren’t injected with RNA curled for only a few seconds, the way all snails do when they haven’t been trained. But the ones injected with RNA from the trained snails? They held the pose for 40 seconds, as if they remembered how to respond to a stimulus, even though they had never encountered it before. The researchers also tested some of the same techniques on snail neurons in a petri dish.

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