Word: molecular
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...most scientists, this reference system, or memory, is one of the most important tools of man's intelligence. Long before the development of molecular biology, Marcel Proust pondered the mystery of memory in Remembrance of Things Past. About a man's own past, he wrote that "it is a labor in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere beyond the reach of the intellect." In Swann's Way, it was a tea-soaked petite madeleine that touched off the hero's long-forgotten childhood memories...
...belief by the results of his experiments with rats. When he taught them special tasks, he discovered that the RNA had not only increased in quantity but was different in quality from ordinary RNA. In short, what Hydén did was to lay the groundwork for a molecular theory of memory...
THIS INTERACTION between environment and heredity is one of the factors that make it so difficult to change human characteristics. Another is that nearly all behavioral traits are polygenic?dependent on several genes. But even so complex a trait as intelligence may eventually come under the control of molecular biologists. Some scientists fantasize that super-geniuses will some day be produced by increasing brain size, through either genetic manipulation or through transplantation of brain cells to newborn infants or to the fetus in the womb. (Such cells might be synthesized in the laboratory or developed by taking bits of easily...
...lower creatures objectively. Some say that Ungar may have discovered not a memory molecule but a molecule that blocked a normal response (to seek darkness) instead of teaching a new reaction (to seek light). Most investigators doubt that a single memory molecule will be found, but they believe that molecular biology will eventually reveal the secret of memory. If so, the blue-sky possibilities are limitless. It might be possible to develop "knowledge pills" that would impart instant skill in French, tennis, music or math. McConnell jokingly proposes another idea: "Why should we waste all the knowledge a distinguished professor...
Many less frivolous proposals for improving memory and other aspects of mental life are emerging from molecular biology and genetics. It is known that genes do not cause behavior. But they influence it and set limits to physical structure, temperament, intelligence and special abilities...