Inherited Memories?

"Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you'll find an edge to cut you."-Mark Lawrence, Prince of Thorns


There are a lot of things that we want to be stored in our memories, some we even dream of sharing with our future children, like (maybe) our love story with our future spouse or things like that but there are also stuff that we desperately try to throw out of our minds like phobias, trauma and other more negative things that we have experienced. Guess what?! According to an article posted last January 6, 2014 at themindunleashed.org, researchers from Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta found out that there is a great possibility for humans to be able to pass down memories to the next generation. They have discovered this through an experiment on rats wherein they conditioned the rats to fear the cherry blossom scent and after that, they tested if the rat's offspring, without conditioning it the same way as the parent rat, will also develop fear of the cherry blossom scent. The result? Yes, the baby rats also had the same fear even without conditioning them to do so. In the article, the scientists have only discovered the passing on of the more negative side of out memories like phobias, anxiety, etc. If that's the case, is this a good thing or is it bad? I guess being aware that our negative memories can be transferred to our children will be helpful for them because in the early years of their lives, maybe even before noticing that they have a phobia for example, they can already find a way of preventing it from being a greater problem for them in the future. I would also love it if one day, good memories can also be passed on and better if at our own want.

These findings are really promising and they show how far science has improved through the years. This is really something to look forward to, don't you think so?

Article from: http://themindunleashed.org/2014/01/scientists-found-memories-may-passed-generations-dna.html