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Re: Aberrant Anthropology
Lorrill Buyens (buyensj@primenet.com)
Thu, 12 Jan 95 23:53:25 cst
In article <789784313snz@rwentk.demon.co.uk> on Wed, 11 Jan 1995 00:31:53
+0000 leo@rwentk.demon.co.uk said...
>
>In article <3epkob$88e@sifon.cc.mcgill.ca> alain@quince "Alain DAGHER"
writes:
>
>> Braxton (bsheaff@epix.net) wrote:
>>
>> : I can understand how he might have skewed the brain eating. In
>> : Pychology experiments with planaria-flatworms-pretty dull creatures
that
>> : live in streams under rocks, you can teach one a maze-just a simple
one
>> : and then grind it up, and feed it to its friends and they know the
maze.
>> : Before you start considering the benefits of being Jeffrey
Dalmer--it
>> : doesn't work with humans. The digestion of the material is more
complete
>> : and the blood-brain barrier keeps out foreign proteins that could be
>> : responsible for memory. Besides the flatworms friends aren't any
more
>> : intelligent after they have their buddy for lunch--they just know
more.
>> : The two ain't necessarily the same.
>>
>> Do you have a reference for this experiment? Personally I don't buy
>> it.
>
>The original experiments were done at the Dept of Psychology at Univ.
>Michigan by Thompson and McConnell, and published in the rather
whimsical
>'Worm Runner's Digest' in the early 60s. (It may have been the late 50s
>actually.) They started by cutting the worms in two and then watching
>how the fragments regenerated - and how much maze running prowess they
>had. Things obviously got a bit wilder after that... ;)
The best things that came out of the whole mess, IMHO, were an excellent
SF book/TV movie ("Hauser's Memory," one of my favorites) and a pretty
good (if considerably less "scientific") short story.
"Doctor Fraud"
Mad Inventor and Purveyor of Pseudopsychology
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