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Re: memory-transfer 

On Thu 19 Feb 1998 Larry Stern e-mailed to histneur-l an appeal for help:

>
>Dear fellow list members (first off, I apologize for the length of this
>message):
>
>Trained as a sociologist, I am in the midst of a research project that
>examines the social and cognitive factors that affect the reception of
>so-called 'extraordinary scientific claims.'
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Please be advised that a small tidbit about the scotophobin episode
is forthcoming from me (Arthur T. Murray), and also that I, too, am
conducting a project with an 'extraordinary scientific claim' -- namely
to have developed a valid Unified Theory of Cognition, for which see
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/ my Web site on artificial intelligence.

>                                              My research site is the
>'memory-transfer' episode which began in the late 1950s with the work of
>Jim McConnell at Michigan and was most vigorously (and rigorously)
>pursued by Georges Ungar at Baylor--you might recall his claim,
>published in NATURE, to have isolated and identified a molecule he named
>'scotophobin' that allegedly coded for dark avoidance in rats.
  ^^^^^^^^^^^
"Scotophobin" is an excellent compound from the Greek words for
"darkness" and "fear," with the "-in" ending to indicate a modern
chemical compound, as in "prost(r?)aglandin" or "endorphin."

>                                                                In
>addition to using standard bibliographic sources, I was fortunate to be
>granted access to both McConnell and Ungar's personal correspondance. 
>As a result, I have thus far been able to identify 180 independent
>research teams that conducted transfer experiments and locate 225
>published experimental reports that appeared between the years
>1961-1983.  Moreover, an examination of NIH and NSF records indicates
>that well over $1 million in grants were awarded specifically for
>transfer research during this time.  This work, then, although it was
>eventually rejected (and for good reasons), was well accommodated and
>pursued (which is not to say accepted) by the relevant scientific
>community into which it was introduced.
>
>And now, my question.  Of the 180 research teams involved, one third
>never published their findings (for various reasons).  I was lucky to
>find them through the correspondence.  Anybody else out there???  Since
>I am examining those factors that affect the probability that a
>scientist would invest time in such a high-risk claim, I need as
>complete a population as I can find. Through identifying additional
>researchers I might also gather more information on the fate of
>submissions of grant proposals and research reports.
>
>Again, I apologize for the length of this message, but I thought that
>the quick gloss in the first paragraph would be of interest--most think
>that the memory-transfer episode was short lived.  And, yes, I know,
>admitting that I am a sociologist is a bit 'like confessing murder' to
>some (apologies to Darwin).
>
>Any and all help--and comments--will be most welcome.
>
>Larry Stern
>Professor of Sociology

Immediately upon reading Larry Stern's appeal for help on-screen, I have
stood up, turned around, and extracted an 18 April 1973 newspaper article
on the exact topic from my Mentifex archives in more than 826 categories.

This original article on the original newsprint from the Wed 18 April 1973
issue (sorry, no page number) of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has the
headline, "Memory A Chemical Reaction".

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- (AP) -- Scientists at the Baylor College of
Medicine have captured animals' memory in a test tube.

   Working with rat brains, they have found that the memory of the
sound of an electric bell is a chemical thing -- an eight-segment chain
of six specific amino acids, basic chemicals of life.

   This discover follows work done at Baylor two years ago, when the
scientists identified a substance found in the brain of rats trained
to avoid the dark.

   The chemical can be isolated from the brain and then injected into
other laboratory animals which were not trained to the sound of the bell
or to avoid the dark.  The un-trained animals then behave as though they
had been trained.

   This effort to crack the code of memory in the mind was reported
yesterday by Dr. Georges Ungar and Dr. S. R. Burzynsky of Baylor at
the 57th annual meeting of the Federation of American Societies for
Experimental Biology.

   "Deciphering the memory code of the brain is at least as important
and (sic) objective as breaking the genetic code," the scientists said.

   "We collected brains from close to 6,000 habituated rats during the
last two years," the Baylor scientists reported.  After purification,
the memory material was shown to be a substance called a peptide.

   Peptides consist of chains of amino acids and the information they
carry depends on which of 20 amino acids may (sic) contain and on the
sequence of the amino acids.

   "They can be compared to words whose meaning is determined by the
order in which the letters follow each other," the scientists said.
"Just as the 26 letters of the alphabet can form a practically infinite
number of words, combinations of the 20 amino acids can easily produce
all the peptides necessary to record all the memories of a lifetime."

(END OF TEXT)  I would be glad to mail this article to Larry Stern.
                               - Arthur T. Murray (mentifex@scn.org)
<HISTNEUR-L@library.ucla.edu>