Alzabo elixir not so far-fetched?
Index · 6 messages · 5 voices · 13 Jul – 14 Jul 2013
Alzabo elixir not so far-fetched?
↳ in reply to
Gerry Quinn
2 quoted lines
From: Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com>
Planaria that had been trained to overcome their instinctive avoidance of bright lights and open spaces
were decapitated. After regenerating their heads, they could be trained to do the same things in only one
lesson.
That doesn't have much to do with gaining someone's memories by eating part of them.
Jerry Friedman
↳ in reply to
Jerry Friedman
I heard tell it wus a duff experiment. THe worms who were fed chopped worms were on an ideal worm diet and learned faster for that reason. The controls had an inferior diet.
hartshorn
13 quoted lines · 1–2 deep
On 14/07/2013 04:30, Jerry Friedman wrote:
From: Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com>
http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/10/4510580/planarian-worm-regrows-memories-after-decapitation
Planaria that had been trained to overcome their instinctive avoidance of bright lights and open spaces
were decapitated. After regenerating their heads, they could be trained to do the same things in only one
lesson.
That doesn't have much to do with gaining someone's memories by eating part of them.
Jerry Friedman
_______________________________________________
↳ in reply to
Jerry Friedman
11 quoted lines · 1–2 deep
On 7/13/2013 11:30 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
From: Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com>
http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/10/4510580/planarian-worm-regrows-memories-after-decapitation
Planaria that had been trained to overcome their instinctive avoidance of bright lights and open spaces
were decapitated. After regenerating their heads, they could be trained to do the same things in only one
lesson.
That doesn't have much to do with gaining someone's memories by eating part of them.
Jerry Friedman
I assume the connection would be that memories traditionally considered to be stored on the brain were in this case stored elsewhere in the body. That seems to be a key Wolfean conceit and one presumably necessary for the alzabo effect, unless the animal always eats the brain before it mimics its dead prey. However, there may be other ways to explain this behavior in planaria.
↳ in reply to
Gerry Quinn
Planarians can hardly be said to have brains. And they aren't worms like the ones we find in our yards. They barely have any internal structure. I don't think anything very useful can be learned from them in what concerns the way the bodies of more complex animals work.
No dia 13/07/2013, ?s 17:55, "Gerry Quinn" <gerry at bindweed.com> escreveu:
4 quoted lines
http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/10/4510580/planarian-worm-regrows-memories-after-decapitation
- Gerry Quinn
_______________________________________________
↳ in reply to
David Stockhoff
From: David Stockhoff
1 quoted line
I assume the connection would be that memories traditionally considered to be stored on the brain were in this case stored elsewhere in the body. That seems to be a key Wolfean conceit and one presumably necessary for the alzabo effect, unless the animal always eats the brain before it mimics its dead prey. However, there may be other ways to explain this behavior in planaria.
Exactly. You can't predict alien super-science without joining the dots a bit!
- Gerry Quinn
An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net