Volume 11, Issue 4, page 8

It May Have i)r en Sometking You Ate
By IRENE SCHMELING
NE OF the reasons many per sons
give for their belief in reincarnation is their "remembrance of former lives". This is valid. However,
school children in science classes
across the country are proving that memory is chemical. If this is true, we may
have to re-evaluate our beliefs.

A little animal known as a flatworm or
planaria is the star of our drama. In development, the flatworm ranks a little
higher than the jellyfish and not quite
as complicated as the hookworm. They have
a nervous system, sense organs, and
"brains': They multiply by dividing and
have the ability to regenerate lost parts.
That is, when cut in half, the head grows
a new tail and thetail grows a new head.

Planaria do not like light. (In nature
they are found under rocks.) Young science students build boxes with a trough
for the planaria and a light at either
end. When one light is turned on the other is turned off. The planaria always
turn to face the unlighted bulb. After a
period of training, the worms learn to
turn in a matter of seconds instead of
r three minutes or longer.

So much for background. The interesting part is this: When a trained flatworm
r is cut in half and has grown a new head
and a new tail, both of these planaria
have retained a memory. When put back in
the trough there are now two trained planaria instead of one.
hid when a trained planaria is cut in
to tiny pieces and fed to untrained worms,
s7 the untrained worms become trained!
These experiments were first conducted
a, in 1952 at the University of Virginia and
x later at the University of Texas. Now
^ sigh school and junior high school stu