A sea slug. (Credit: Zuzha/Shutterstock) Sea slugs aren’t the most exciting critters, but they’re certainly helping researchers make exciting new discoveries. Biologists from the University of California Los Angeles published a study in the journal eNeuro explaining how they “implanted” a memory from one slug into another. In the first chunk of their study, the team, led by David Glanzman, worked with groups of a marine slug called Aplysia. One group of slugs got shocked on the tail once every 20 minutes for a total of five shocks. The next day, they went through the same shock session. The point was to prime them to use what’s called a defensive withdraw reflex — basically, the slug version of a flinch.
When Glanzman and his team later physically tapped these slugs on their tails, the creatures contracted for an average of 50 seconds. But when the team tapped another, shock-free group, ...
