Harry Chesley wrote:
On 12/3/2008 8:11 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote:
Am I right in thinking that what these people:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026845.000-memories-may-be-stored-on-your-dna.html
are saying is that memories can be stored as changes in the DNA
inside neurons?
If so, that would upset a few apple carts.
Yes, but it obviously needs a lot more confirmation first. :-)
Would it mean that memories (including cultural adaptations) could be
passed from mother to child?
No. As far as I understand it, they are proposing changes to the DNA in
the neural cells only, so it wouldn't be passed on. And I would expect
that the changes are specific to the neural structure of the subject, so
even if you moved the changes to DNA in another subject, it wouldn't
"work."
You're right, of course.
But if this holds up, it would not be quite so crazy to imagine a
mechanism that uses junk DNA signalling to get the end caps of the
genital DNA to reflect the changes.
I admit, though, this is stretching it a bit ;-).
As for the changes not working in another subject: yes, it would
probably be the case that specific memories are encoded in an
individual-specific way. But what about more general factors? What if
there were some primitive types of musical understanding, say, that were
common across individuals, for example? Like, a set of very primitive
concepts having to do with links between sounds and finger movements?
If such general factors could be passed across, a person could inherit
above average musical ability because their parents had been active
musicians all their lives.
All this is fun to think about, but I confess I am mostly playing
devil's advocate here.
Implication for neuroscientists proposing to build a WBE (whole brain
emulation): the resolution you need may now have to include all the
DNA in every neuron. Any bets on when they will have the resolution
to do that?
No bets here. But they are proposing that elements are added onto the
DNA, not that changes are made in arbitrary locations within the DNA, so
it's not /quite/ as bad as you suggest
It would be pretty embarrassing for people gearing up for scans with a
limiting resolution at about the size of one neuron, though. IIRC that
was the rough order of magnitude assumed in the proposal I reviewed here
recently.
Richard Loosemore
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agi
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