Are Memories Transferable? Meet the Scientists Replicating an Infamous Study to Find Out

In the 1960s, an odd experiment showed planarian worms could transfer memories by consuming each other. It was a sensational finding--that is, until the worms stopped learning. It was the dead of winter in Boston. The surface of the Charles River was frozen solid. But Zachary Kelso braved the biting cold to finally put to rest a mystery that has haunted neuroscience labs for over half a century. To do that, Kelso, a research assistant in the Harvard lab of the neuroscientist Sam Gershman, needed some worms . Specifically, planarians: arrow-headed flatworms, which are among the simplest creatures to possess a brain and a nervous system with bilateral symmetry like ours. Normally, labs order these widely used model organisms from biological supply companies.