Science: Of Mice and Memory

For the past decade, in experiments with mice, rats and even lowly flatworms, a number of researchers have claimed success in transferring learning or memory between organisms, usually by feeding or injecting one animal with the brain extract from another. Those claims have never been completely accepted, however, because other scientists were not always able to duplicate the experiments, and no one could identify the exact nature of the so-called "memory molecules" necessary for such a transfer. The skeptics may have to reconsider their stand. Last week a Baylor University scientist reported that...