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Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 25: Jan-Feb 1983 |
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Learning By Injection
The following abstract is taken from the Psychological Record.
"In an attempt to replicate previous findings that learned information could be transferred from trained donor animals to untrained recipient animals by means of brain extracts, two groups of rats were trained to approach a food cup in response to a discriminative stimulus (click or light). RNA extracted from the brains of these animals was injected intraperitoneally into untrained rats. The two untrained groups showed a significant tendency to respond specifically to the stimulus employed during the training. The results support the conclusion that acquired behaviors can be transferred between animals by transferring brain DNA, and further suggest that the transfer effect is dependent upon and specific to the learning of the donors."
(Oden, Brett B., et al; "Interanimal Transfer of Learned Behavior through Injection of Brain RNA," Psychological Record, 32:281, 1982.)
Comment. Of course, morphogenic fields, as described in R. Sheldrake's A New Science of Life, could also explain this effect.