The Chemical Transfer of Memory, Research and Implications. An I/D/E/A Occasional Paper.

This booklet, the product of a second seminar on the chemical transfer of memory, summarizes the current research work presented at the seminar including future implications for education as perceived by the 12 biochemists and psychologists who participated. Developments described include 1) the memory-transfer experiments of James McConnell from which he deduced that memory was a transmittable chemical rather than a permanently morphological structure; 2) experiments by Murray Jarvic to test a theory regarding the short-lived electrochemical process (the physiological mechanism that carries the short-term memory) which triggers off a succeeding chemical process crucial to the establishment of long-term memory; 3) James McGaugh's preliminary model for the biological system by which the brain receives, holds, and releases information; 4) experiments with electroconvulsive shock and drugs to explore the time-dependent processes involved in memory trace consolidation; 5) Georges Ungar's work directed toward proving that the informational processes in the nervous system have a molecular basis as is the case with genetic information; 6) the work of Carl Haywood on the long-term memory process in the mentally retarded and of Nicholas Plotnikoff with pemoline treatment of humans. The implications section notes that while most questions remain unanswered evidence mounts which will allow learning to be transferred and memory increased through use of drugs. (JS)