A Mother's Life Experience Affects Her Child's Memory The ideas that qualities acquired from life experience can be transmitted to other generations has long been considered  - in science – to be incompatible with the current understanding in genetics. In the field of energy healing we accept as normal that this ‘genetics’ means certain beliefs, and patterns can be handed down across one (or many) generations. We experience them consciously, sub-consciously and unconsciously from our environment and it is not until we start to question what makes us tick that we begin to consider this ‘genetic’, handed down inheritance Research Using Mice Neuroscientists usually study behaviour and genetics in mice. Since mice are quick to breed, the effects of different variables can be relatively quickly studied. Mice have proven to be a good comparison for effects that have later been seen to be similar in humans. A mouse is considered to be a child up to about 16 days old and at 23 days it is an adolescent. When scientists want to change different things about the environment in which the mouse grows up they call this environmental enrichment or environmental deprivation. In the case of environmental enrichment the scientists seek to improve the mouse’s surroundings by, for example, giving it new toys, exposing it to more contact with other mice or allowing it to exercise more (mice & rats love running in wheels). This environmental enrichment is known to have many positive effects such as increasing memory and learning, as well as delaying – and even reversing -  neurodegenerative diseases. Nurture versus Nature. It even changes the structure of the neurons in the brain itself e.g more branches are formed (increasing the number of connections in the brain), more synapses  are produced (so that more electrical impulses can be transmitted along the nerves) and even new neurons can be born.  All this from just improving the surroundings in which the mice live. Transmission Across The Generations This latest study from Larry Feig’s group is hot off the press: it was just published on 4th February. They discovered that when the environment of the mouse was improved (enriched), this not only improved the memory and learning of that mouse, but also that of that mouse’s offspring (‘children’). Even if the environment was improved when the mother mouse was still a ‘child’ it still had a positive effect on the memory & learning of her future babies. This effect still holds true even if the children of that mother do not grow up in an enriched environment. It even remains effective when the baby mice are brought up by adopted-parent mice who have not had the benefit of the improved surroundings. The long-lasting improvements are that transmittable and that robust! Enrichment Restores Genetic Deficiencies Scientists, being scientists, like to test their findings and theories by then looking at completely the other side of the coin. In this case, Feig and his co-workers decided to look at a certain breed of knock-out mouse. These are mice that have been specially bred with genetic mutations. In the group that were used in this study, knock-out mice were investigated that had their memory for fear removed. Normally this is tested by the mouse receiving a small electric shock to its foot sole at a certain location in its cage. ‘Normal’ mice rapidly learn to associate that particular position with the unpleasant sensation of pain – and as a result they avoid it – or they start to show fear when they come near it. In the fear knock-out mice, they receive the foot shock at the same location, but they don’t remember it….hence they don’t learn to avoid or fear it since they can’t remember where it was. The next part of this research was to se if there was an effect of environmental enrichment on the fear knock-out mice. The results were astonishing. Improving the living surroundings of this group of mice RESTORED their ability to remember the fear and electric shocks - and also that of their children! This was transmitted to the children even if the children were not raised in an enriched environment themselves. Excitement What this piece of research is now suggesting to the scientific community is that revolutionises the understanding of how Nature — starting with an individual’s DNA sequence — and nurture — including the way life experience alters the way DNA is expressed — can combine not only to regulate the health of subsequent generations, but also possibly the incidence of disease. Exciting times on the border between neuroscience and energy medicine :=) See you all again in April! References: J.A. Arai, S. Li, D.M. Hartley & L. Feig, Transgenerational Rescue of a Genetic Defect in Long-Term Potentiation and Memory Formation by Juvenile Enrichment. Journal of Neuroscience, 2009, volume 29(5), pages 1496-1502. B.M. Williams et al. Environmental enrichment: effects on spatial memory and hippocampus CREB immunoreactivity. Physiol Behav, 2001, volume 73, pages 649-658. D. Meshi et al. Hippocampal neurogenesis is not required for behavioural effects of environmental enrichment. Nature Neuroscience, 2006, volume 9, pages 729-731. O. Lazarov et al. Environmental enrichment reduces Abeta levels and amyloid deposition in transgenic mice. Cell, 2005, volume 120, pages 701-713. T.L.Spires & A.J. Hannan. Nature, nurture and neurology: gene-environment interactions in neurodegenerative disease. FEBS J, 2005, volume 272, pages 2347-2361. A. Fischer et al. Recovery of learning and memory is associated with chromatin remodelling. Nature, 2007, volume 447, pages 178-182. J. Nithianantharajah & A.J. Hannan. Enriched environments, experience-dependent plasticity and disorders of the nervous system. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2006, volume 7, pages 697-709.