About the episode
The model worm C Elegans, which is used in many scientific studies, does not exactly have a good memory. After a few hours, new information disappears as if it was never there. Unless you make such a worm very cold very quickly, or give it lithium.
The researchers in this preprint are not suggesting that we should freeze ourselves from a certain age or stock up on lithium. But it certainly also has interesting implications for our own memory, which may have now been discovered here.
For example, what about the regulatory molecule that plays an important role in this process in these worms? What functions does it have in humans?
But back to that research: you cannot of course ask a worm whether it remembers what day it was yesterday. So how do they check whether such a worm still knows something or not?
What they have done is train the worms to associate a certain smell with a lack of food. If they smell the scent again shortly afterwards, they have learned: not good. But two hours later, they forgot about it again. Unless they are placed on ice for at least 16 hours, or when they are given lithium.
The effect is not permanent. If the frozen worms are brought back to room temperature, the countdown clock continues ticking, and they have forgotten about it three hours later.
Read more about the research here: How to freeze a memory: putting worms on ice stops them forgetting
