Monday, January 20, 2014

Memories Transmitted with DNA




In some respects this has been obvious for a long time but rarely noted.  Part of our genetic memory is a natural almost hardwired dislike for snakes.   I suspect that the same holds true for key carnivores.  After all, these will trigger out lower tier brain into instant action with our fore brain finding itself merely along for the ride.


A prospector friend of mine found himself thirty feet up a tree an instant after confronting a grizzly.  I personally found myself thirty feet away in fine running form upon confronting a sake at a distance of a foot from my face.  Yes we all knew how to handle the situation, yet our instinctual brain skedaddled.


What I am not seeing here is anything beyond actual memory, and nothing more complex seems to have come through.  Nuance is not part of the process but generational retention of key fractals of danger is obviously possible.


Scientists have found that memories may be passed down through generations in our DNA

Posted on 30 December, 2013 by admin


New research from Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta, has shown that it is possible for some information to be inherited biologically through chemical changes that occur in DNA. During the tests they learned that that mice can pass on learned information about traumatic or stressful experiences – in this case a fear of the smell of cherry blossom – to subsequent generations.

According to the Telegraph, Dr Brian Dias, from the department of psychiatry at Emory University, said: ”From a translational perspective, our results allow us to appreciate how the experiences of a parent, before even conceiving offspring, markedly influence both structure and function in the nervous system of subsequent generations.


“Such a phenomenon may contribute to the etiology and potential intergenerational transmission of risk for neuropsychiatric disorders such as phobias, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.”
This suggests that experiences are somehow transferred from the brain into the genome, allowing them to be passed on to later generations.
The researchers now hope to carry out further work to understand how the information comes to be stored on the DNA in the first place.
They also want to explore whether similar effects can be seen in the genes of humans.
Professor Marcus Pembrey, a paediatric geneticist at University College London, said the work provided “compelling evidence” for the biological transmission of memory.
He added: “It addresses constitutional fearfulness that is highly relevant to phobias, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorders, plus the controversial subject of transmission of the ‘memory’ of ancestral experience down the generations.
“It is high time public health researchers took human transgenerational responses seriously.
“I suspect we will not understand the rise in neuropsychiatric disorders or obesity, diabetes and metabolic disruptions generally without taking a multigenerational approach.”

Professor Wolf Reik, head of epigenetics at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, said, however, further work was needed before such results could be applied to humans.

He said: “These types of results are encouraging as they suggest that transgenerational inheritance exists and is mediated by epigenetics, but more careful mechanistic study of animal models is needed before extrapolating such findings to humans.”

May our DNA Carrying also spiritual and cosmic memories passed down in genes from our ancestors ?



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