From Paul Wilkins
The hypothesis of some kind of molecular coding for long-term memory storage
is not that new. In fact, you have mentioned it yourselves in the past.
In 1969 (May or June, I seem to recall) a note in New Scientist
suggested much the same, except that the then-favoured molecule was not DNA but
RNA. This was, I believe, partly based on the idea that the rate at which RNA is
synthesised in neurons corresponds with the maximum rate of firing of
neurons.
There was also, before that, a reported experiment in which flatworms, I
believe, were trained to navigate a T-shaped maze. The experimenters ground up
their neural tissue and fed it to other flatworms. They claimed that this second
group learned the maze more quickly than the first group. The result could not
be replicated, and the consensus became that the improved performance of the
second group was due to improvements in the experimenter’s ability to train
flatworms.
You, of course, can check the accuracy of at least part of my neural
encoding.
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We looked at the news and features headlines for 1969 and didn’t see anything
about memory in RNA. The claim about flatworm RNA was published by James
McConnell in 1962—Ed.
Trowbridge, Wiltshire
