Memories may be stored outside the brain

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.

When the TV set is broken, you can't receive channels. Doesn't mean the channels are in the TV.

reply to post by vasaga


but the engineers create the t.v. set, so the channels should be tuned back into. . .

re: consciousness creates matter pseudo-science new age mumbo jumbo

reply to post by QuantriQueptidez


Did you ever consider that such deceases may simply create a disconnect between the self and good head ?

I also not believe in the concept of individual soul (the general spiritual definition of it), even the recyclable type but I'm a pantheist and believe in being part (even if at submicroscopic level) of the divine (unknowable) order/purpose, a sensor in this entropic chaotic reality.

Originally posted by djmarcone
There is definitely a lot of evidence for DNA memory and genetic memory. My dad was listening to C2C one night where that was the topic, and he told me something that I didn't know from my childhood. Before I could really talk more than just a few words I exhibited knowledge of some things I definitely shouldn't have known and had never been told. Scientific/chemistry knowledge that I wouldn't have known but my dad would have.

While inheritance between offspring was not within the scope of the research, I do remember something akin to this coming up on in an episode of Through the Wormhole. Basically pregnant mothers transmit their own cells to their growing child. A small amount of foreign cells live on in you from your mother. Your mother also has some from her mother, and so on. So you could actually have some very old, forgeign DNA floating around. A very very small amount. Apparently it can cause complications for the child if its body decides to fight the forgeign organism. I am not sure this applies to the male line however, as it has to do with transmission through the placenta. I could be mis-representing the episode, I saw it a while ago.

But also from a spiritual standpoint there is a lot of evidence of spirit/body being an arrangement that can separate, and that the real you can leave your body either at will or under certain circumstances.

Probably not related to this thread at all, but I have a question. What proof, beyond a large amount of anecdotal experiences, is there for out of body experiences? Not just descriptions of travels, but solid proof that can't be refuted. What I would like to see would be like a study that shows someone floating, incorporeally, into a room and reading something that was written. Someone would write something on a board and you would have to read it. That would be fairly solid to me. Anything short of that would be ripe for picking apart. I am looking for observable and repeatable evidence, as should anyone who follows the scientific method.

But out of body experiences are way off topic in my opinion.

Originally posted by soulwaxer

Originally posted by kmb08753
reply to post by soulwaxer

 

What studies have shown, empirically, that we can alter real world objects with thought? Sure it isn't just our perception of those object that is being changed?

While taking hallucinogenic substance many years back, I would swear objects would change shape, but as no one else ever saw the same change, it was clearly just my view that was altered.

I'm not arguing against it per say, a study showing someone changing the real world with their brain would be interesting to me.

But yeah, this type of discussion wasn't the point of the original post.

Reread what you just wrote:

"a study showing someone changing the real world with their brain would be interesting to me."

When you decide to take out the trash, this decision starts in your brain, right? Then signals are transferred to your arms and legs and what not, and then you take out the trash. The result is that the real world has changed.

Semantics.

What you just described is a mechanical action. We can trace the nerve impulses that direct the muscles and accomplish the work. A large complex orchestra of biological action.

What I am asking for is a change that occurs in an external object through no other action that you willing it. Like Luke Skywalker lifting his x-wing.

I'll start growing muscles now!

Originally posted by EasyPleaseMe
Many mammals have an inbuilt fear of snakes and spiders.

How is that fear programmed into DNA I wonder?

It would be programmed into the visual system. Many creatures have templates programmed in their visual system to recognise partners. For those brilliant blue butterflies, the rule is quite simple - anything metallic blue that fills a butterfly shaped field in their vision - unfortunately for many, a Ford pickup truck also matches that template. For mammals, anything black and spindly would generate fear, as well as anything sliding along.

Originally posted by Astrocyte

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.

Some people think there might be a "conceptual" or purely "informational" source which governs genetic processes.

You pointed out that a lot of our DNA is "junk" i.e. they don't seem to do anything. Only the "master" genes are the lock and key for setting of genetic processes. But how do these processes work? Where's the guide? As you rightly pointed out, how does the worm know?

If the informational hypothesis turns out to be true (something that is not even remotely testable at the current time) it will help clarify the relationship between purely physical processes like RNA/DNA, and the informational processes which embed content in them.

That would be cool if we could figure that out. I am not against it. Either an intelligent or natural outside, blueprint that directs how genes, or matter for that matter, forms, would be very interesting. I just wish we could test for and understand it in an observable manner.

Not as an argument against your post, but until we can demonstrate something it should be kept in the realm of philosophy, not science. And personally, unless you can show me, I won't believe it.

Thank you for your thoughtful post.

Originally posted by filledcup
well ive already said this here on ats in more than one response. memories are held in consciousness. when memories are called it is consciousness that has devotedly written to that location in the brain. this area is really for storing all your immediate decision making abilities' assets. things that the body can do on it's own with out need for added focus from the spirit for interaction with a person's immediate environment. the ego brain as eastern spiritual doctrines refers to it. there is ego brain (physical), and soul intellect (spiritual/invisible/dark matter producing light charged by consciousness).

So are you saying the worm's, incorporeal consciousness reconstructed its brain with the memories it was just taught? That it was the consciousness that directed the form it should take instead of a biological mechanism?

I am not saying it can't be true, but it can't be tested at this point, that I know of. DNA can, on the other hand, be seen to direct the construction of cell tissue. I can only speak to what I can see, not what I ponder. Unforunately, I can't believe something until it can be demonstrated(even that belief can be called into question until all things are known, which could be impossible).

If it is not demonstratable, its not science. Philosophy is awesome and allows for conclusions through premise alone. Separate schools of thought. This was a scientific study citing what they saw happen when they taught a worm and cut its head off.

However, if there is an incorporeal consciousness, it could certainly explain very well how this happened. So if that's what you are saying... Kudos, good point. Wish we had proof.

reply to post by kmb08753


Your theory/experiment you're referring to is easily misinterpreted, not containing any link between quantum theory and consciousness.

It's an old factoid. Now give me something new.

Originally posted by InSolace
reply to post by kmb08753

 

Your theory/experiment you're referring to is easily disproven to contain any link between quantum theory and consciousness, done in an earlier post.

I don't believe I posted a theory. I cited and linked an article about research that was done. The test suggests that the worms, after learning a behavior, regrew that memory without a brain. So it stands to reason that some form of that memory was kept somewhere other than the brain.

I never brought quantum theory into this. I may have mentioned it as a point to something else though. There have been many tangents in this thread, in my opinion.

reply to post by kmb08753


And I was going on that quantum theory tangent Trying to clear things up here. There is no evidence for a out of body consciousness from what I've seen, and DNA-encoded memory is merely speculative. I might be killing the thread with absolutes though.

I did read the OP and the worms could have a accelerated version of the salmon's ancestral/instinctive memory. The brain consists of cells and if we were to follow a similar path to this worms' DNA-encoding of memories I speculate that at least certain memories are encoded in our DNA, perhaps depending on the neurons' specialization?

Originally posted by QuantriQueptidez
reply to post by vasaga

 

but the engineers create the t.v. set, so the channels should be tuned back into. . .

Not the point. Amazing how often people try to dismiss analogies by using red herrings.

Originally posted by QuantriQueptidezre: consciousness creates matter pseudo-science new age mumbo jumbo

Ah yes. The "pseudo-science" argument. Do we really have to go through the list of things labeled as pseudo-science that turned out to be regarded as true by science itself? So-called pseudo-science nothing more than a label of ridicule, and in itself is not only non-scientific, but completely sheep-minded that limits actual investigation and progress. It's just like the religious people calling the non-religious heretics or satanists. Or the gullible calling the aware ones conspiracy theorists. Or the statist calling libertarians anarchists. Or the feminists calling the MRM mysoginism.

But I already know where this discussion is going. Especially when such a non-valuable comment gets so many stars. Arguing with a materialist about consciousness is like trying to tell the Christian that the Bible was written by man. Instead, I'll just leave this stuff here, and call this 'conversation' as a thing of the past..

This article is perfect for people like you.
Science vs. Pseudoscience

And some scientific taboos, since people like you love to pretend that science is this uber perfect method that never fails, has no biases and is completely objective.








And lastly, your last hope to wake up.

Originally posted by kmb08753
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.

Seems like we need better memory of bogus claims regarding flatworms. A similar claim was made way back in 1955, but it has since been attributed to observer bias.

Has this experiment been independently replicated or will it too be attributed to observer bias like the 1955 claim?

Not only that, but I think it's a stretch to call the ganglion in a flatworm a "brain". Their nervous system is nothing like higher life forms and the claimed effects were not observed with higher life forms, in the 1955 study.

Flatworm

In 1955, Robert Thompson and James V. McConnell conditioned planarian flatworms by pairing a bright light with an electric shock. After repeating this several times they took away the electric shock, and only exposed them to the bright light. The flatworms would react to the bright light as if they had been shocked. Thompson and McConnell found that if they cut the worm in two, and allowed both worms to regenerate each half would develop the light-shock reaction. In 1962, McConnell repeated the experiment, but instead of cutting the trained flatworms in two he ground them into small pieces and fed them to other flatworms. He reported that the flatworms learned to associate the bright light with a shock much faster than flatworms who had not been fed trained worms.

This experiment intended to show that memory could be transferred chemically. The experiment was repeated with mice, fish, and rats, but it always failed to produce the same results. The perceived explanation was that rather than memory being transferred to the other animals, it was the hormones in the ingested ground animals that changed the behavior.[15] McConnell believed that this was evidence of a chemical basis for memory, which he identified as memory RNA. McConnell's results are now attributed to observer bias.[16][17] No blinded experiment has ever reproduced his results of 'maze-running'.

So has a blinded replication experiment of Michael Levin and Tal Shomrat's experiment been performed? If not, it could be 1955 all over again.

Also your source doesn't say anything about DNA storing memory so you're jumping to conclusions without good cause. Look at the flatworm's nervous system. It has about a dozen ganglia on each side of the body. The largest of those 12 can be called a brain or a "mini-brain", but frankly they aren't that much bigger than the other ganglia, so if you really think that's a "brain" then you could also say it has 11 other "micro-brains" on each side, for a total of 24 mini and micro brains.

Now here would be a better test. cut the flatworm into 200 pieces, noting which pieces have ANY ganglia in them (mini-brains or micro-brains). If only the regenerated flatworms from the sections with ganglia in them "remember", that would show that all 24 of the ganglia in the flatworm can store information so they are in effect all mini or micro brains. It's possible the sections without the ganglia may not have any memory and if they don't, that would rule out your DNA idea.

It's also possible the experiment isn't even going to be replicated at all when another scientist does it the same way like happened in replication attempts of the 1955 experiment.

Originally posted by alfa1
...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?

Perhaps because Sheldrake is telling people what he thinks they want to hear, rather than facts?

Originally posted by InSolace
And I was going on that quantum theory tangent

Trying to clear things up here. There is no evidence for a out of body consciousness from what I've seen,

Yep, I keep asking for evidence or some test when someone brings it up, but no one provides any. I have never seen any, personally.

I did read the OP and the worms could have a accelerated version of the salmon's ancestral/instinctive memory.

Yeah, this research reminded me of those type of phenomena. That why I wrote about instinct.

The brain consists of cells and if we were to follow a similar path to this worms' DNA-encoding of memories I speculate that at least certain memories are encoded in our DNA, perhaps depending on the neurons' specialization?

Good question. This test indicates more testing is certainly warranted, in my opinion. I will keep my eyes open for more.

I disagree with the idea that genetic memory could be the explanation for reincarnation memories, simply because not only does there not appear to be any relation between the prior and subsequent persons, often times the person having the memories was born not long after the other person died. At least from what I understand. And I cannot see why so many mundane memories, basically everything that ever happens to a person, would be stored genetically somehow. What is the purpose? This does not mean it is not possible. I am sure it is.

That is the only explanation really for what we see in these worms. What gets me is why it took someone so long to come up with this experiment. It is a simple experiment, and it has profound implications. Yet we are just now hearing about it? Strange to say the least, at least in my opinion.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by kmb08753
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.

Here I was actually trying to make a counter point. My attempt to show something unique to the worm that could explain the results counter to memory being genetic.

Has this experiment been independently replicated or will it too be attributed to observer bias like the 1955 claim?

I certainly don't know. I wasn't attempting to offer a definitive statement, just that it was interesting. Maybe I shouldn't have said "very strong evidence".

Flatworm

In 1955, Robert Thompson and James V. McConnell conditioned planarian flatworms by pairing a bright light with an electric shock. After repeating this several times they took away the electric shock, and only exposed them to the bright light. The flatworms would react to the bright light as if they had been shocked. Thompson and McConnell found that if they cut the worm in two, and allowed both worms to regenerate each half would develop the light-shock reaction. In 1962, McConnell repeated the experiment, but instead of cutting the trained flatworms in two he ground them into small pieces and fed them to other flatworms. He reported that the flatworms learned to associate the bright light with a shock much faster than flatworms who had not been fed trained worms.

This experiment intended to show that memory could be transferred chemically. The experiment was repeated with mice, fish, and rats, but it always failed to produce the same results. The perceived explanation was that rather than memory being transferred to the other animals, it was the hormones in the ingested ground animals that changed the behavior.[15] McConnell believed that this was evidence of a chemical basis for memory, which he identified as memory RNA. McConnell's results are now attributed to observer bias.[16][17] No blinded experiment has ever reproduced his results of 'maze-running'.

Yeah, I have seen the study where they ground them up refernced before. I didn't pay it much mind as the conclusions seemed biased and overly hopeful.

Also your source doesn't say anything about DNA storing memory so you're jumping to conclusions without good cause.

Yes, it looks like I was over zealous with the terms DNA and genes. I should have just left it at "outside the brain." I will try to be more careful.

Look at the flatworm's nervous system. It has about a dozen ganglia on each side of the body. The largest of those 12 can be called a brain or a "mini-brain", but frankly they aren't that much bigger than the other ganglia, so if you really think that's a "brain" then you could also say it has 11 other "micro-brains" on each side, for a total of 24 mini and micro brains.

Excellent information. Like I said, I'm no expert. Life time science enthusiast is about as far as I can go. Exactly why I like this site. Some people here can add very useful information.
So the results could be unique to this species and certainly not what it appeared to be at first.
Great counter point.

Thank you for the reply.

reply to post by kmb08753

Not as an argument against your post, but until we can demonstrate something it should be kept in the realm of philosophy, not science. And personally, unless you can show me, I won't believe it.

I tend to agree.

But lets not forget that science too has its philosophical assumptions. For example, physicalism. Physicalism does not provide an intelligible explanation for consciousness; so as long as consciousness remains unexplainable by physical reductivism, it's plausible that the problems were having with genes might be related to our problem with consciousness.

Of course, science will progress, and eventually the field of genomics will be savvy enough to determine whether genes contain all the information there is to make a sheep a sheep and a human a human, or, it'll encounter a brick wall, and other theories will be entertained.

If the mental is real - and frankly there is plenty of reason to suspect that it is - then one would assume that there is some causal relationship between consciousness and physicality. Some theorists believe quantum mechanics will eventually fill this gap, explaining how the possibilities become probabilities through quantum processes.

Nowadays plenty of people deride this speculation, but I don't exactly understand why. Admittedly, it is ahead of its time. Most scientists want to limit themselves to the physical before they start vetting questions about the mental. The logic is, lets understand things from the ground upward. This is what science has been doing for centuries, and I don't think were at any particular breaking point quit yet. Neuroscience has a century or so before the brain is really figured out; genomics too is still in its infancy. In a sense, it makes sense to limit your discussion to what we've been considering. But my intuition tells me that the physical will eventually knock on the front door of the mental, and when that happens, science will entering new territory.

Originally posted by kmb08753
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.

Thank you for this! I recently posted here on ATS about this subject (but it wasn't a thread) and this helps support my contention, along with that of many others. Science will be reluctant to admit our memories are located outside the brain, but if they are honest they will have no choice. That day is coming.

Originally posted by Astrocyte
reply to post by kmb08753

 

Not as an argument against your post, but until we can demonstrate something it should be kept in the realm of philosophy, not science. And personally, unless you can show me, I won't believe it.

I tend to agree.

But lets not forget that science too has its philosophical assumptions. For example, physicalism. Physicalism does not provide an intelligible explanation for consciousness; so as long as consciousness remains unexplainable by physical reductivism, it's plausible that the problems were having with genes might be related to our problem with consciousness.

Of course, science will progress, and eventually the field of genomics will be savvy enough to determine whether genes contain all the information there is to make a sheep a sheep and a human a human, or, it'll encounter a brick wall, and other theories will be entertained.

If the mental is real - and frankly there is plenty of reason to suspect that it is - then one would assume that there is some causal relationship between consciousness and physicality. Some theorists believe quantum mechanics will eventually fill this gap, explaining how the possibilities become probabilities through quantum processes.

Nowadays plenty of people deride this speculation, but I don't exactly understand why. Admittedly, it is ahead of its time. Most scientists want to limit themselves to the physical before they start vetting questions about the mental. The logic is, lets understand things from the ground upward. This is what science has been doing for centuries, and I don't think were at any particular breaking point quit yet. Neuroscience has a century or so before the brain is really figured out; genomics too is still in its infancy. In a sense, it makes sense to limit your discussion to what we've been considering. But my intuition tells me that the physical will eventually knock on the front door of the mental, and when that happens, science will entering new territory.

Certainly way off topic, so I will try to be brief and probably not reply again on this thread. Please don't take it personally.

There is a line somewhere between philosophy and science. They often go hand and hand. But I think a scientific theory should be based on some obvservation. "This happens, so why does it happen." The original observation is the tricky part. People jump to conclusions for what they observe before they understand what they are seeing. Like, instead of "I had a dream that came true" they say "how did I see the future in my dream?" In this, they have already made the assumption that they saw the future. Then they try to prove how they could have seen the future.
It's a tricky thing, but objectivity is key to understanding. A difficult thing given the intimacy of the human condition.

Different topic, mind/body. Mental vs. Physical. I see no reason to assume they are separate. They certainly could be, but I see no reason why they need to be or even anything that really indicates that they are. Consciousness/awareness is a complex issue, but so is biology and reality. I think it is MOST LIKELY there is a physical explanation for all things, we just don't know everything about reality yet. Mental is just some mechanism we don't understand yet. Be it extra dimensions or whatever.