[HN Gopher] Memories are not only in the brain, human cell study...
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       Memories are not only in the brain, human cell study finds
        
       Author : vivekd
       Score  : 178 points
       Date   : 2024-11-09 13:53 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (medicalxpress.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (medicalxpress.com)
        
       | neom wrote:
       | The Body Keeps the Score is a brilliant but difficult read. Do
       | recommend it.
       | 
       | https://books.google.ca/books/about/The_Body_Keeps_the_Score...
        
         | wslh wrote:
         | Thank you for the reference, I think it contributes to add the
         | overview:                 Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans
         | and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat;
         | one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up
         | with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical
         | violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world's foremost
         | experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with
         | survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent
         | scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both
         | body and brain, compromising sufferers' capacities for
         | pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores
         | innovative treatments--from neurofeedback and meditation to
         | sports, drama, and yoga--that offer new paths to recovery by
         | activating the brain's natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr.
         | van der Kolk's own research and that of other leading
         | specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous
         | power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal--and offers
         | new hope for reclaiming lives.
        
           | Jerrrrrrry wrote:
           | Thank you, this made a difference (and thanks noem for the
           | book recc)
        
         | copperx wrote:
         | Thanks. Does it require to know basic neurology? Or medicine?
         | Why is it a difficult read?
        
           | neom wrote:
           | emotionally difficult, he goes deeply into peoples trauma, so
           | it gets into some extremely "triggering" areas, not much
           | phases me but that book wasn't a super easy from a holding
           | back tears perspective.
        
         | temp0826 wrote:
         | This came to mind when I saw the post. I work at an ayahuasca
         | retreat center and these types of things are front and center
         | here. Physical wounds can and do heal, but traumas
         | ("energetic"/psychological wounds) remain fresh as the day they
         | happened and influence us in immeasurable ways. The effects of
         | ayahuasca often put a spotlight on them and it can be a rough
         | ride until they are fully processed.
        
           | Cantinflas wrote:
           | Imo treating traumas with ayahuasca is like treating flu with
           | a baseball bat.
        
             | PittleyDunkin wrote:
             | I think the analogy here would be diagnosis (beyond
             | western-defined ontologies) rather than treatment.
             | Treatment comes later.
        
             | temp0826 wrote:
             | It's a different school of thought for sure. We find
             | traditional therapy to be very synergistic with it.
             | Sometimes one can cognitively know how to fix something,
             | but despite that it still sticks in the body. Ayahuasca can
             | help to "percolate" that knowing into the body/nervous
             | system for great results.
        
             | akira2501 wrote:
             | Except the "trauma informed ayahuasca ceremony" is $500 a
             | pop with a minimum of 5 ceremonies. Plus you have to travel
             | outside of the USA. Good cottage industry.
        
           | bayindirh wrote:
           | > but traumas ("energetic"/psychological wounds) remain fresh
           | as the day they happened and influence us in immeasurable
           | ways.
           | 
           | I experienced this in two occasions. First, when I was going
           | to therapy, and somehow managed to reach these traumas, the
           | second is in deep meditation, which Japanese call "meeting
           | with the ghosts".
           | 
           | Traumas stay fresh until you face them again, and acknowledge
           | them. The moment you accept that they have happened, you have
           | the chance to heal them.
           | 
           | This doesn't mean the process is smooth, painless or easy.
           | It's neither, but it's very possible.
        
         | mettamage wrote:
         | But isn't it because in reality, the limbic system keeps the
         | score? Example [1]. I also think he mentioned it himself.
         | 
         | [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8418154/
        
       | the__alchemist wrote:
       | I'm having a hard time garnering a mechanism from the article,
       | but I think DNA methylation is a good candidate.
        
       | whoisjuan wrote:
       | This is wild, but many studies have reached the same conclusion.
       | 
       | I remember reading somewhere that heart transplant recipients
       | have random memory flashes that are not their memories, and
       | sometimes they develop new personality traits.
        
         | hank808 wrote:
         | That sounds really interesting! Can you cite any articles or
         | anything?
        
           | whoisjuan wrote:
           | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38694651/
        
         | kadoban wrote:
         | > I remember reading somewhere that heart transplant recipients
         | have random memory flashes that are not their memories, and
         | sometimes they develop new personality traits.
         | 
         | Wild. Doesn't necessarily surprise me too much that the body
         | stores some memories outside the brain, but it seems _very_
         | surprising that another body/brain can read and understand ones
         | created by another. I'd assume that the whole mind and memory
         | system is one big correlated mess, not essentially composed of
         | data files in a ~standard encoding.
        
           | kibwen wrote:
           | It would be hasty to assume that any memories would be
           | transferable in such a way. If your hypothesis is that
           | transplant recipients can have their memories altered by
           | interpreting information carried by foreign organ cells,
           | start by assuming they're reading junk data that they cannot
           | decipher. Brains are great at turning junk data into
           | something that feels real.
        
             | kadoban wrote:
             | That was my followup question, are the memories accurate
             | (even as much as normal memories are), or are they
             | nonsense? Or even better, it'd be fun if they're not
             | completely nonsense, but corrupted in some understandable
             | way (like people/places are substituted for instance).
             | There's no way at all that memories are encoded as
             | essentially mpeg files, so _something_ has to be wrong with
             | them.
             | 
             | But yeah, you're right, odds seem good that they're just
             | nonsense, but even then it just feels weird that the body
             | can even interpret them as memories in the slightest.
        
               | yetihehe wrote:
               | Maybe it's all about encoding and it IS pretty standard?
               | Brain can decode vision through tongue nerves [1] as long
               | as it looks like vision data and is correlated with head
               | movements. There were experiments with other senses sent
               | through different means or whole new sense (magnetic [2]
               | and echolocation [3]). Looks like brain is so flexible,
               | that anything resembling sensible information will be
               | decoded.
               | 
               | [1] https://news.wisc.edu/a-taste-of-vision-device-
               | translates-fr...
               | 
               | [2] https://blinry.org/compass-belt/
               | 
               | [3] https://www.physoc.org/magazine-
               | articles/echolocation-in-peo...
        
             | im3w1l wrote:
             | I would probably ascribe it to the procedure itself. Like I
             | imagine if you put someone under, opened up their chest,
             | took their heart out and then... put it back in - that the
             | stress of that whole thing would be enough to seriously
             | mess with your head.
        
               | kadoban wrote:
               | You could probably test that theory. Just compare heart
               | transplants against similarly invasive surgeries and see
               | if the same effects exist.
        
         | winocm wrote:
         | Also relevant: https://www.mdpi.com/2673-3943/5/1/2
        
           | y-c-o-m-b wrote:
           | > In addition to changes in preferences, some recipients
           | describe new aversions after receiving a donor heart. For
           | example, a 5-year-old boy received the heart of a 3-year-old
           | boy but was not informed about his donor's age or cause of
           | death. Despite this lack of information, he provided a vivid
           | description of his donor after the surgery: "He's just a
           | little kid. He's a little brother like about half my age. He
           | got hurt bad when he fell down. He likes Power Rangers a lot
           | I think, just like I used to. I don't like them anymore
           | though" (p. 70, [8]). Subsequently it was reported that his
           | donor had died after falling from an apartment window while
           | trying to reach a Power Ranger toy that had fallen onto the
           | window ledge. After receiving his new heart, the recipient
           | refused to touch or play with Power Rangers
           | 
           | This is the most fascinating thing I've read in a long time.
           | Thanks for the link
        
             | winocm wrote:
             | There's a similar story I've read before in a different
             | paper regarding about an organ donor who drowned and then
             | the recipient developed an extreme aversion to water.
             | 
             | I don't recall what the exact title or link to the article
             | was though.
        
         | GuB-42 wrote:
         | A theory I have seen is that we tend to mix up cause and
         | effect.
         | 
         | So, for example, a dangerous situation causes stress and stress
         | causes the heart to beat faster, all normal. But make the heart
         | beat faster through external means and it will also cause
         | stress. So it is not clear which one is the cause and which one
         | is the effect, probably some weird combination, with all sorts
         | of feedbacks. Life is messy.
         | 
         | So get a heart that isn't yours and it will not beat in a
         | familiar way, which, in turn may be interpreted as changing
         | emotions. And even if memories are entirely contained within
         | the brain, what if the heartbeat is part of these memories,
         | with a heart that reacts differently, the meaning of these
         | memories may change.
         | 
         | For a tech analogy, in order to record a video game session, it
         | is common to only record player input. If the game is
         | deterministic, you just need to run the game with the recorded
         | inputs and the session will be faithfully reproduced. It is
         | much more compact than something like a video. Now imagine we
         | change the game engine so that it responds slightly differently
         | to inputs, now, when replayed, the game will appear different.
         | If we imagine memories are "replays" and the engine is our
         | body, than altering our body will also alter our memories.
        
         | mock-possum wrote:
         | Man that seems like such a fantastical claim -- but yeah, it
         | does seem like the physical structure to support it could be
         | there.
        
       | RaftPeople wrote:
       | This seems to make sense given that Purkinje cells in the brain
       | have been shown to do this same type of thing in isolation
       | (detect and respond to patterns of input).
       | 
       | It meant there was some low level mechanism lurking inside at
       | least those cells, so not too surprising it's more general.
        
       | htk wrote:
       | Of course cells and tissues react to external stimuli, that's
       | part of the homeostasis process, and a fundamental part of our
       | adaptivity or we'd die with minimal changes in the environment.
       | Calling it memory is the same as saying a bruise is my body
       | having a memory of me hitting the corner of the table. Well toned
       | bodies are the memories of the weight lifting exercises they've
       | performed in the past, and so on.
       | 
       | But I can only imagine the extrapolations that alternative
       | medicine people will make with this.
        
         | aszantu wrote:
         | there's an interesting trauma release meditation where your
         | limbs are asked to remember things. It's pretty interesting
         | what comes up, then you're asked to let it go and when you do,
         | some weird extra deep relaxation sets in
        
         | PittleyDunkin wrote:
         | Memories seem in this context to mean state that isn't
         | immediately physiologically apparent. But yes, I think your
         | definition is reasonable too, if not very useful for
         | communication.
        
         | neom wrote:
         | I read the paper and I didn't think that is what they're
         | talking about. The molecular systems for temporal pattern
         | detection where previously thought to be specialized to
         | neurons, but this article indicates that they exists in other
         | cell types. Bruising is a response to physical trauma, lacking
         | any temporal pattern sensitivity? Molecular mechanism related
         | to learning and memory formation, ERK and CREB signaling are
         | known to be crucial for memory formation in neurons. I think
         | what the paper is showing that this specific molecular
         | machinery for detecting and responding to temporal patterns
         | isn't unique to neurons
         | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-53922-x
        
         | jb1991 wrote:
         | The odd conclusions you draw are not what is explained in this
         | article.
        
       | grugagag wrote:
       | Is muscle memory real then?
        
         | iefbr14 wrote:
         | That was my conclusion too after reading it. I was always
         | wondering how the brain could send all needed info to the
         | muscles fast enough when someone is playing piano or typing 120
         | characters a minute.
        
           | danhau wrote:
           | I would have assumed it did by anticipating. Musicians
           | reading sheet music tend to read ahead, but that could be
           | something else entirely.
        
             | tetha wrote:
             | Mh, I'm neither a Neurologist, nor any level of good at
             | being a musician.
             | 
             | But it goes further than that. Now after a few years, I
             | start to recognize patterns in songs and this removes a
             | huge amount of cognitive overhead. For example, there are
             | very classical rhythms in rock and metal. These were very
             | intimidating two or three years ago, because it's so many
             | notes to look at and a lot of them fast and it's just a lot
             | of stuff to look at.
             | 
             | Now, on a guitar, I just recognize 18 bars of gallop-rhythm
             | on string two and my right hand just does that, at least at
             | the speeds I can do. Or you can recognize how a song is in
             | a certain key and my left hand is just used to what happens
             | in such keys. Sure, you need to learn the notes, but the
             | physical motions are largely set already.
             | 
             | Similar things on a keyboard. In complex sections, a lot of
             | thought can go into hand position and which finger to use
             | to press a key, because you may need to prepare movement of
             | your hand a few notes early or you can't hit a certain
             | transition. I've noticed that something other than
             | conscious thought optimizes that as well.
             | 
             | My biggest takeaway is that music is hard, and the human
             | kinematic system is entirely amazing.
        
         | Nevermark wrote:
         | Muscles and nerves adapt to physical challenges to make higher
         | intensity efforts easier in three ways: better effort
         | coordination, higher demand signaling, and higher force
         | produced by muscle fibers.
         | 
         | (We tend to think of just the latter, but all three
         | significantly impact "strength".)
         | 
         | Each of these has mechanisms of maintenance and faster recovery
         | after use lapses. Which can all be described as memory.
         | 
         | First, the spinal cord and motor cortex learn more effective
         | coordination. Proper coordination of muscles impacts strength
         | by ensuring our different muscles cooperate effectively to
         | apply force where we need it. We imagine simple movements as
         | simple efforts, but they are really a series of coordinated
         | multiple muscle response.
         | 
         | This can be considered "normal" neural/cognitive learning and
         | memory in the brain, spinal coord and nervous system.
         | 
         | Second, our nervous system learns to send higher intensity
         | demand signals to the muscles.
         | 
         | I don't know what the mechanism is here. Maybe higher
         | coordination of simultaneous signals within the muscle? Maybe
         | an increase in signal strengths? An increase in nerve cells? A
         | combination? In any case, once learned, this learning is mostly
         | maintained despite loss of stimulus and relearned quickly.
         | 
         | This creates a common source of injury. After a workout hiatus,
         | our ability to demand intense muscle response can exceed the
         | abilities of our reduced muscle's capabilities. It can feel too
         | easy to push our bodies hard again, resulting in injuries that
         | abort the attempt to restart training.
         | 
         | Restart weight lifting programs with patience and caution,
         | until muscles catch up with the renewed overload, hypertrophy
         | and recovery cycle.
         | 
         | The third very long term memory mechanism in muscle cells is
         | quite interesting: myonuclear accretion. Support cells merge
         | with muscle cells permanently giving them multiple nuclei,
         | permanently increasing their ability and speed to create the
         | proteins we need for hypertrophy (muscle growth) and recovery
         | (repair and energy store recuperation).
         | 
         | Myonuclear accretion allows muscle cells to grow far beyond
         | their original limits. And accounts for why previously trained
         | muscles can retain a modestly higher level of strength and
         | size, even after training regimen lapses.
         | 
         | All three memory mechanisms account for why regaining previous
         | high levels of strength happens faster, with less effort, than
         | it took to gain any level of strength the first time.
         | 
         | Aother memory mechanism include higher interoception,
         | prioperception, kinematics, and higher level learning regarding
         | exercise form, workout discipline, workout organization, body
         | limitations, injury warnings, positive associations with making
         | effort, etc. that are all result in long term increased
         | strength and ability recover and accumulate it.
        
       | soared wrote:
       | It does not seem like the article supports the title. The study
       | seems more focused on spaced repetition?
        
         | neom wrote:
         | The research goes beyond observing spaced repetition it shows
         | that essential features of memory formation like encoding and
         | retention of temporal patterns occur outside the nervous
         | system.
        
       | ants_everywhere wrote:
       | This study is specifically about "learning" that takes place
       | without interacting with the brain.
       | 
       | It's learning in the same sense the immune system learns to fight
       | of infections. The difference is that the mechanism by which
       | cells record state is similar to one of the mechanisms also used
       | by the brain at the cellular level, which you would expect.
       | 
       | The cells and structures that make up the brain evolved from
       | simpler structures, so we would expect some reuse of mechanism.
        
         | lupire wrote:
         | The obvious-in-retrospect distinction is that memory is
         | everywhere (even a footprintnin dirt is a memory), and
         | selective (reinforced) memory is more complex (as in the OP
         | example), and the _combination_ and _communication_ of memories
         | and information is where the brain really outshines other
         | objects.
        
         | Jerrrrrrry wrote:
         | Using the immune system as an analogy as another complexity
         | layer of adversarial <-> learning/adaptation in relation to the
         | context of both complexity theory / machine learning is
         | tempting but almost is too easy. Plus the immune system is
         | likely more complex than the analogy would hold up to.
        
         | akira2501 wrote:
         | The immune system is several systems. One of my favorite parts
         | is the Thymus.
         | 
         | It's literally setup like a gauntlet. New immune cells from
         | marrow come through the Thymus and are tested. They need to
         | pass through and attack foreign cells then pass through and
         | _not_ attack host cells. They are essentially tagged and
         | filtered by this process.
         | 
         | Most cells are let go into the body, some cells are reserved as
         | self regulatory cells, and the others that do not pass are
         | destroyed.
         | 
         | It's a literal quality control and selection machine for your
         | immune system.
        
       | cantrevealname wrote:
       | This brings up the question about whether there are hereditary
       | information transmission methods other than DNA. There are so
       | many things we ascribe to "instinct" that might be information
       | transmitted from parent to offspring in some encoded format.
       | 
       | Like songs that newborn songbirds know, migration routes that
       | animals know without being shown, that a mother dog should break
       | the amniotic sac to release the puppies inside, what body shapes
       | should be considered more desirable for a mate out of an infinite
       | variety of shapes.
       | 
       | It seems it implausible to me that all of these things can be
       | encoded as chemical signalling; it seems to require much more
       | complex encoding of information, pattern matching, templates,
       | and/or memory.
        
         | neom wrote:
         | You might enjoy the research of Dr. Ian Stevenson. It's his
         | research that got me deep down the rabbit hole on this subject
         | many years ago. (I have 1 vivid memory that I would call a
         | "past life memory") -
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Stevenson
        
           | Mistletoe wrote:
           | What's the memory?
        
           | gliptic wrote:
           | This is paranormal reincarnation mumbo-jumbo, not
           | inheritance.
        
         | bilsbie wrote:
         | And can those stored behaviors affect the phenotype of the
         | offspring too? (LaMark has entered the building)
        
         | ben_w wrote:
         | > what body shapes should be considered more desirable for a
         | mate out of an infinite variety of shapes.
         | 
         | However this specifically works in humans -- and considering
         | the diversity of actual human preferences includes, amongst
         | many other things, _non-existant dragons_ * -- the first I
         | heard of the term "superstimulus" was with the example of
         | certain beetles that kept trying to copulate with beer bottles:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus
         | 
         | * Humans must have _something_ guiding us, or we 'd all be (a)
         | bisexual and (b) equally often aroused by dragons as by those
         | we could actually have a child with; the fact that dragons
         | happen at all is simply an indication that our brains are
         | likely using a very simple set of heuristics to get there, and
         | simple heuristics is totally a thing that DNA could encode
        
           | thrw42A8N wrote:
           | Often human sexuality is rooted in power dynamics and these
           | things are associations. I certainly am attracted to powerful
           | women wearing whatever style of clothing my primary school
           | teacher had...
        
         | pessimizer wrote:
         | Human babies pick up prosody in the womb from their mothers.
         | Here's a random, seemingly comprehensive article about that
         | that I haven't read yet (I know about this from other sources.)
         | 
         | https://aeon.co/essays/how-fetuses-learn-to-talk-while-theyr...
        
         | aydyn wrote:
         | You might be interested in epigenetic inheritence. We do know
         | that some epigenetic marks are passed down but its still very
         | much unknown how much heritable information is encoded in
         | epigenetics.
        
           | PittleyDunkin wrote:
           | While histones and methylation aren't DNA themselves, they're
           | certainly incapable of functioning without DNA. I'd assume
           | the parent poster was referring to further still mechanics.
        
         | Nasrudith wrote:
         | I recall hearing about newborn birdsongs being learned "in
         | utero" (not sure if quite the right term but lets go with
         | that). In that case the channel for transmission was sound. It
         | was apparently used as a shibboleth against brood parasite egg
         | replacement. If the baby didn't sing the song that was being
         | sung to it then the baby got abandoned by presumably
         | disappointed parents. I suppose it could also be a 'health
         | test' of sorts since sufficiently deformed or disabled
         | offspring would also fail.
         | 
         | Parental teaching and learning is a spectrum and not a binary.
         | We've found with relocating deer (to similar but not identical
         | environments) doing worse until learning occurs over a few
         | generations and they catch up. Animals may not be as
         | intelligent as us but their ability to learn and adapt should
         | not be underestimated.
        
           | devmor wrote:
           | "In ovo" would be the egg-laying animal equivalent to "In
           | utero"
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | Frank Herbert would be so pleased.
        
         | spockz wrote:
         | Isn't this the whole plot behind Assassin's Creed's Animus
         | where they are able to look into (and "interact ") with the
         | past based on information in the cells/DNA.
        
         | akira2501 wrote:
         | > migration routes that animals know
         | 
         | How do you know they "know" them?
         | 
         | > all of these things can be encoded as chemical signalling
         | 
         | Why do you presume they are chemical signals?
         | 
         | > pattern matching
         | 
         | Psychedelics show the absurd power of layered pattern matching
         | in our brains and what happens when you disrupt those
         | mechanisms. I would not discount it so readily.
        
           | Supermancho wrote:
           | > How do you know they "know" them?
           | 
           | It's a statistical guess, as with most phenomena. When
           | individuals, alone, consistently travel toward direction
           | without observable prompting, it's expected there is another
           | stimuli. This may be an unseen force (birds following
           | magnetic fields). However, it appears there is a genetic
           | component.
           | 
           | https://archive.is/vt6rU#selection-797.2-797.236
           | 
           | Notably: "They also inherit from their parents the directions
           | in which they need to fly in the autumn and spring, and if
           | the parents each have different genetically encoded
           | directions, their offspring will end up with an intermediate
           | direction."
        
             | akira2501 wrote:
             | > It's expected there is another stimuli
             | 
             | Yes, and your link then identifies it:
             | 
             | > They have at least three different compasses at their
             | disposal: one allows them to extract information from the
             | position of the sun in the sky, another uses the patterns
             | of the stars at night, and the third is based on Earth's
             | ever present magnetic field.
             | 
             | They clearly do not "know" paths anymore than water "knows"
             | what gravity is.
        
               | int_19h wrote:
               | Having a compass is one thing, but that only gives you
               | the overall direction, not the specific path to follow.
        
           | madaxe_again wrote:
           | Yeah, there's fundamental stuff that animals just _don 't_
           | know. Like cats have the instinct to hunt, and are good at
           | that - but unless they've seen another cat eating prey, they
           | don't realise that that's a thing that they can do, and you'd
           | think that would be a pretty core learning to pass on.
        
       | szundi wrote:
       | Is this epigenetics?
        
       | readthenotes1 wrote:
       | "massed space effect" Obfuscation of cramming vs repetition (like
       | graduated recall interval) training
       | 
       | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34519968/
        
       | filoeleven wrote:
       | This topic is related to the work of Michael Levin's lab, which I
       | only recently found out about and have been digging into. They've
       | released a bunch of papers, and Michael has given plenty of in-
       | depth interviews available on YouTube. They're looking at low-
       | level structures like cells and asking "what can be
       | learned/achieved by viewing these structures as being intelligent
       | agents?" The problem of memory is tied intricately with
       | intelligence, and examples of it at these low levels are found
       | throughout their work.
       | 
       | The results of their experiments are surprising and intriguing:
       | bringing cancer cells back into proper functioning, "anthrobots"
       | self-assembling from throat tissue cells, malformed tadpoles
       | becoming normal frogs, cells induced to make an eye by recruiting
       | their neighbors...
       | 
       | An excerpt from the link below: Our main model system is
       | morphogenesis: the ability of multicellular bodies to self-
       | assemble, repair, and improvise novel solutions to anatomical
       | goals. We ask questions about the mechanisms required to achieve
       | robust, multiscale, adaptive order in vivo, and about the
       | algorithms sufficient to reproduce this capacity in other
       | substrates. One of our unique specialties is the study of
       | developmental bioelectricity: ways in which all cells connect in
       | somatic electrical networks that store, process, and act on
       | information to control large-scale body structure. Our lab
       | creates and employs tools to read and edit the bioelectric code
       | that guides the proto-cognitive computations of the body, much as
       | neuroscientists are learning to read and write the mental content
       | of the brain.
       | 
       | https://drmichaellevin.org/
        
         | agumonkey wrote:
         | As a sidenote, Peter Reddien's lab did other studies on
         | planaria (videos are on youtube) and found cells that are
         | supposedly dedicated to map the whole body and indicate how
         | differentiation should go in that area (basically one input to
         | the morphogenesis of this animal). It was, after levin's work,
         | another eye openener, as you kinda approach biology as an
         | information problem... everything happening has a piece of data
         | that explains it, we just didn't look everywhere.
        
       | mmooss wrote:
       | Here is the paper itself:
       | 
       | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-53922-x
        
       | jbverschoor wrote:
       | Haven't read it myself, but heard about it many times. "The Body
       | Remembers" ( https://www.amazon.com/Body-Remembers-
       | Psychophysiology-Treat... )
        
       | Vecr wrote:
       | People are saying very weird things in the comments. To the
       | extent that epigenetics transfers at all, they can't go very far.
       | 
       | For past-life memories, uh no.
       | 
       | For memories in non-brain tissues, there's a major detail problem
       | there, if any of this pans out at all. For memories transferred
       | from another person, it makes no sense. Your nerves don't
       | transfer universal (between human) data files around, and your
       | brain is a tangled mess. Memories won't transfer beyond, maybe,
       | possibly, some stuff around personality, mood, and various
       | neurotransmitter things.
       | 
       | And I don't think it would be common, if it happens at all,
       | without intentional development and use of new tech.
       | 
       | For example it should theoretically be possible to recover the
       | basic personality of a cryogenically vitrified brain, based quite
       | a bit on genetics and some on brain structure, but beyond that I
       | can't say. Unless you know many things I don't, and have
       | carefully checked that you truly know them, you should not expect
       | memory recovery, at least above the low double digits percentage.
       | 
       | And that's assuming "full technology", I for sure don't know to
       | even get started.
        
       | numewhodis wrote:
       | Which is why it is important to eat right and listen to the body.
       | Memories can be activated without awareness, anywhere in the
       | head, modulating the deliberate cognitive processing as well as
       | whatever happens "in the back of the head".
        
       | transfire wrote:
       | Well L. Ron got that one right.
        
       | nitwit005 wrote:
       | The headline is nonsense. That the body "remembers" things is not
       | news. My immune system remembers the cold I got.
       | 
       | The source study states:
       | 
       | > Our findings show that canonical features of memory do not
       | necessarily depend on neural circuitry, but can be embedded in
       | the dynamics of signaling cascades conserved across different
       | cell types.
        
       | xyst wrote:
       | In so many words, this study basically described the immune
       | system. Similar mechanism to how immune system is able to
       | identify foreign bodies (virus, bacteria) and issue the
       | appropriate response.
       | 
       | Fundamental building blocks for vaccines.
        
       | trallnag wrote:
       | Interesting, reminds me of this article "Previous sexual partners
       | affect offspring": https://time.com/3461485/how-previous-sexual-
       | partners-affect...
       | 
       | For example, if a female first has sex with very large virile
       | males and absorbs their sperm packages and then gets fertilized
       | by a tiny frail male, the offspring's size is on the larger side,
       | determined by the previous sexual encounters.
       | 
       | Not sure if there has been any followup on this research.
       | 
       | https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.12373
        
         | magneticnorth wrote:
         | Note: This study was on a particular species of fly. I think
         | that's an important detail left out of the one-sentence
         | summary.
        
       | mettamage wrote:
       | Mitochondria are alive (also on the front page), memories are not
       | only in the brain
       | 
       | What's next?
       | 
       | Exciting titles, I wonder what's behind them.
        
         | rolph wrote:
         | keep flogging dead paradigms, and you eventually get to a level
         | of resolution that demands new ones
        
       | bookstore-romeo wrote:
       | Past conversation [0] on a SciAm article about basal cognition. I
       | highly recommend the article [0]
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39127028
        
       | alyx wrote:
       | The physical body is what the mental state (ex, memories) "looks
       | like" from a third person perspective.
        
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