Scientists Find Worms that Recently Evolved the Ability to Regrow Complete Head | Hacker News Reader

Scientists Find Worms that Recently Evolved the Ability to Regrow Complete Head

neurosciencenews.com

45 pointslaurex20 comments

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Do these worms have memory?

Seems like there might be some interesting experiments exploring the memory/instinct boundary?

I seem to remember reading about experiments showing that some worms retain memory throughout the body.

Researchers discover flat worms retain memories even after decapitation [0]

[0] https://phys.org/news/2013-07-flat-worms-retain-memories-dec...

Even humans have neurons in the heart and the gut. It would not surprise me that some kind of memory can be stored in there as well.

https://www.medicaldaily.com/can-organ-transplant-change-rec...

We have to ask ourselves what a memory means. Is a tattoo with a motto a memory? It might affect behavior. Is immunity memory? That's not in the brain. If you exercise hard and get big muscles is that memory? Are epigenetic changes memory? Is adaption of hormonal glands (shrinking balls from injecting testo) which affect behavior memory? I'd argue we are full of memory.

what restless pontification

if anyone else wondered, it is of course pseudoscience that hearts have neurons, they have cardiomyocytes which are quite different than neurons. But its easy to understand why thats a another fantasy spread by popular "science" journalism (add it to the list of bullshit they spread lol).

All major organs have neurons, or at the very least project axon "fibers" (but the heart specifically has full nerve bundles).

They make up the autonomic nervous system, which is the network of motor and sensor neurons connected to the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord). The latter does your thinking, the former keeps you from suffocating.

I'm not sure I understand the distinction you're making, and whether the nerves are considered part of the heart there are most definitely nerves into the heart. From [1], "The vagus nerve directly innervates the sinoatrial node; when activated, it serves to lower the heart rate". This is illustrated here [2], in a diagram from Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4404375/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagus_nerve#/media/File:Gray79...

Cardiomycytes are muscle cells.

I'm not up to date on heart anatomy, though. As I recall, it's true that cardiomycytes also perform some neuron-like functions, but wasn't there a "pulse clock" bundle that's made up of neurons? Or are those still cardiomycytes?

My first question was: what does recent mean? Would be nice to have that at the top of thw article instead of in the middle. It's 10-15 million years.

If you cut one of these worms into 100 pieces would you get 100 new worms?

The article indicates you could get a complete lineus sanguineus with just 1/200,000 of the original.

Like plant cuttings.

I call that self healing system.

Do you have a personality disorder? Then our surgeric decapitation is just what you need. We offer painless decapitation and half an year of head regeneration in a comfort conditions for your body. Tasty glucose with vitamins and protein mix will be injected each half an hour into your bloodstream. Twice a day our nurses will tickle your body to support its reflexes.

I tried this once as it was advertised as a way to instantly lose 10 points of ugly fat - which did work, but my head grew back again.

How much did it cost? You could repeat the procedure every once in a while.

Reminds me of eternal sunshine of spotless mind.

This thing looks gross ...

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