The Noah Saga is inspired by the story of Noah’s Ark as described in the bible which includes events leading up to the building of the Ark, the great flood, the rescue of pairs of all of the earth’s animals, life on the Ark, and finally, landfall. In this interpretation of the biblical story, the animals on the Ark are people represented as animals. What is rescued and perhaps preserved from the ravages of the great flood, is their human experience, knowledge, brains.
The Noah Saga is made up of short stories with themes that include recruitment of the rescued ‘animals’ and the dynamic relationships of all of the Ark’s passengers. The stories are meant to be playful and designed to appeal to the imagination and wonder of the child in the adult mind.
The dining room of the Ark serves as the entertainment center of the Ark but also where all meetings take place, announcements and plans are reviewed and Ark general business is conducted. Every Wednesday evening after diner some of the animals on the Ark, those with backgrounds in science present the science behind all sorts of activities of the mind.
Remembering forgotten events
Part 1
Most of the animals felt stuffed. They had eaten too much of their favorite dishes and now sat slumped in their chairs. The reptiles could hardly keep their eyes open and some of the mammals were snoring. Far too much snitzengruben, beer and whisky sours will inevitably have their effect. Nevertheless all of the animals remained in the dining hall of the Ark rather than retiring.
Like many evenings, an interesting or entertaining program followed dinner. Sometimes that was a musical show, or a speaker, storyteller, singer. Sometimes it was a dance instructor.
Tonight, was science night, not the most popular program but still better than the Wobbly Fern Duck talking about beautiful mathematical equations. And so, this night the Pink inflated elephant, the Ark’s scientist in chief, was going to tell them about some facet of the world of scientific discovery. For this evening short talk, the shorter the better is what most of the audience prefered. The Elephant was going to tease the Ark’s animals about memory and forgetting in some surprising forms. He warned the audience that he was going to start by stretching their thinking about what is memory and forgetting. The animals knew well that the Pink elephant knew how to titillate, confuse, excite his audience often leaving them wondering if they had lost their minds, which can be good thing. Oh well.
The Elephant got up, walked to the front of the dinning hall and leaned on the table as if to keep himself from falling down. He took a deep breath and stood there staring out at all of the animals and winked at the Randy Striated goat who waved back at the elephant and then shouted. “OK what’s up for tonight’s long-winded talk, I mean meaningful talk about memory and forgetting.”
The elephant raised his trunk and sprayed the goat with the remains of his cream soda drink and then began.
“Ok. Tonight, I want to shake up your thoughts about memorable events that are gone but not forgotten. One thing you can count on and that is I am not going to talk about the usual kind of memory like where did I leave my official Ark t-shirt.
So, let us start with what none of you would call remembering. Would you call remembering what some DNA can reveal when it is activated. For example, did you know that a plant that has been extinct for over a hundred years can be resurrected, grown again by putting fragment of its DNA together, planting it in a petri dish and wha la you now can put the revived plant in the earth and there you have it. The sweet fragrant scented mill bloom plant can be grown again. Nature forgets but not totally.
One of the Hohum shouted out, “Bullshit. What does that have to do with forgetting, memory, that is genetics, agriculture.”
The elephant responded, “Sure but genetic information is knowledge and genetic knowledge can disappear and then with the right science tools can reappear, can be remembered. ”
The elephant heard lots of boos but continued.
How about this. Did any of you ever meet up with a Neanderthal, or to be more specific, the brain of a Neanderthal? No? Of course not. They disappeared several hundred thousand years ago. So we are left with yarns about how their brains worked back then. Of course, like the Hohum, maybe all of you think you are a lot smarter than our ancestors. No so fast. From Neanderthal bone fragment scrapings, you can extract DNA and actually grow parts of a Neanderthal brain in a Petri dish. What can be reproduced is an old brain that has all the properties of brain tissue. We can actually observe how that DNA derived brain works. The only thing missing is that the tissue can’t talk to us. Maybe one day we can get the primitive brain to tell us what it was like in the good old days of grunting and head banging. ”
More boos and from the back of the room the star gazer shouted, “Don’t believe it. You science types are forever trying to trick us and are you trying to tell us that recovering how a brain works from the DNA derived from some bones is a kind of remembering. You should be called the great deceiver playing the game of bait and switch.”
The elephant ignored the outburst and continued.
“What about a spoon made of metal that has it shape altered, by bending it, maybe several times. That metal is not the same anymore and has built in the bent experience that has altered its structure. Metal can ‘remember’ where it has been before.”
Now it was the German Land Lizard that stood up and in a loud voice announced, “You are crazy and you’re making us doubt our own sanity with stories about pieces of metal that remember and genes that can be resuscitated into action”.
The Elephant held up his trunk up high. “OK. I meant to get you to imagine all sorts of things about forgetting and memory and I shouldn’t have started with genes and archeology. Luckily, I didn’t talk about organisms that don’t even have a brain but can learn and remember, like slime mold. Maybe this should all wait for some other time and maybe…”
The speckled river mouth interrupted the elephant, “Another time? How about never”.
The green spear spotter added, “Right on.”
The Purple beaked goose gobbler raised her wing and got up. She was chewing on a mouth full of roasted pumpkin seeds so it was a bit hard to hear to understand what she was saying in her cackling voice. “Well I guess we should consider getting vaccinated once again to prevent getting the dumb dumb disease. You know the body’s immune system may have forgotten what it knew was to be avoided.
The entire dining room broke out in laughter.
The air seemed to be hissing out of the Pink inflated elephant. He shrunk and sighed. I’ll stop but before I do one more story and this one will be pretty clear to all of you but no less puzzling.
The story begins over a hundred years ago and features the then almost famous neurologist Dr. Gihirn. He would see all sorts of patients and kept a log of their symptoms. One day he came across a patient who could remember nothing that had occurred in his life years months ago, days ago, even his experiences of that morning, were lost from his memory. He could not even tell you what he had for breakfast 2 minutes earlier. Dr. Gihirn saw this as a case of dense amnesia, complete forgetting.
One morning when he saw the patient he asked, “What is the season of the year?” The patient almost got it right. He looked out the window and saw leaves on the trees and said that it was spring or maybe summer. He didn’t remember what season it was but did not lose lots of knowledge that he had acquired through much of his life. So, for example, he knew that if the tree had leaves it wasn’t winter. Dr. Girhirn asked him all sorts of other questions that required factual knowledge and the patient came up with lots of correct answers.
He also asked the patient to solve a jig saw puzzle. The patient completed it in about the same time that normal mammals needed to complete the puzzle.
Before leaving the patient’s room Dr. Girhirn said goodbye and shook his hand. As he did so he stuck him with a pin that he had hidden in his palm. The patient winced and said, “What the hell was that about.” The Doctor said I am sorry with no other explanation.
Two weeks later Dr. Gihirn sent his assistant to see the patient who brought along the same puzzle that the patient had solved earlier. He asked the patient to complete the same jig puzzle. It took him less than half the time to solve it this second time. The assistant was amazed knowing that the patient could remember nothing from his most recent past.
The assistant exclaimed, “Wow. You are a whiz at solving this crossword puzzle. How come you are you so good at doing this.”
The patient had no memory of seeing and completing the puzzle two weeks earlier but answered the question by saying “As a kid I always liked solving all sort of problems including puzzles and that is why I am so good at it now.”
Minutes later Dr. Gihirn arrived. He came into the room and put out his hand but the patient would not shake his hand but instead pointed to the ceiling and commented that some of the ceiling light bulbs were out. The doctor then put his hand out again and once again the patient wouldn’t shake his hand and instead scratched the back of his head.
The doctor then asked the patient, “Why wouldn’t you shake my hand? The patient responded by telling the doctor that he heard that some doctors stick patients with needles to find out if they can feel a pin prick.
I can go on but I will tell you that this very specific type of forgetting, this memory impairment, was given a name by a doctor in Siberia who stole the discovery notes from Dr. Gihirn. His name is Dr. Korsakoff. But aside from who stole what notes what do you make of the patient’s memory? The patient can’t remember anything that happened to him recently but then again, his experiences can be remembered via his actions. However, there is no awareness of the source of his memory. Would you say that the patient remembered being stuck with a pin by his doctor when he refused to shake the doctor’ hand. Obviously if he could solve the same puzzle much faster the second time does that mean he remembered the earlier experience with the puzzle. What do you make of all of these observations about remembering, forgetting. What do you think?
Who needs a brain to learn and remember
Part 2
Most of the animals felt stuffed. They had eaten too much of their favorite dishes and now sat slumped in their chairs. The reptiles could hardly keep their eyes open and some of the mammals were snoring. It was Wednesday night and so the animals remained in the dining hall of the Ark rather than retiring.
Like many Wednesday evenings, an interesting or entertaining program followed dinner. Sometimes that was a musical show, or a speaker, storyteller, singer. Sometimes it was a dance instructor.
Tonight, was science night, not the most popular program but still better than the Wobbly Fern Duck talking about beautiful mathematical equations. The Pink inflated elephant, was the speaker/entertainer for tonight. The animals knew that the Pink elephant knew how to excite and confuse his audience. In the past, many animals on the Ark wondered if they had lost their minds listening to the Pink Elephant.
For this evening’s short talk, the shorter the better, he was going to tease them about learning and remembering. He warned the audience that he was going to start by stretching their thinking about what is memory and forgetting.
The Elephant got up, walked to the front of the dining hall, and leaned on the table as if to keep himself from falling.
He bellowed, “OK do you need a brain to learn and remember?
He took a deep breath and stood there staring out at all of the animals and winked at the Randy Striated goat who waved back at the elephant and then shouted. “OK what’s up for tonight’s long-winded talk, I mean meaningful talk about memory and forgetting.” The elephant raised his trunk and sprayed the goat with the remains of his cream soda and then began.
“Ok. Tonight, I am not going to talk about the usual kind of memory like where did I leave my official Ark t-shirt. Let me ask all of you, can a metal spoon remember?
If you bending a spoon several times it is not the same anymore and has built-in the bent experience that has altered its structure. Metal can ‘remember’ where it has been because the molecules have been changed by their experience.”
Now it was the German Land Lizard that stood up and in a loud voice announced, “You are crazy and you’re making us doubt our sanity with stories about pieces of metal that remember”.
The Elephant held up his trunk high. “OK. I meant to get you to imagine all sorts of things about forgetting and memory. When you get vaccinated your body has learned something. It is changed so that the next time it is hit by some bug it rejects kills off that beasty, it remembers it is an outsider and should be attacked. Is that a kind of memory.
One of the animals shouted “Another nut case lecture” and then the animals started to throw some of their uneaten dinner at the elephant. A piece of melon rind bounced off his trunk.
The Purple beaked goose gobbler raised her wing and got up. She was chewing on a mouth full of roasted pumpkin seeds so it was a bit hard to understand what she was saying. “Well, I guess we should consider getting vaccinated to prevent getting the dumb dumb disease.”
All of the animals started to laugh in unison.
It didn’t stop the elephant from continuing.
What about an organism that doesn’t even have a brain. Can it learn and remember? Slime mold can do that.”
Roars of laughter followed.
The air seemed to be hissing out of the Pink inflated elephant. He shrunk and sighed. Look. This is real. I will put an article in our Ark library and you can read all about learning and remembering in slime molds. But as starters this is what you should know.
First of all, slime molds are easy to study one-celled organisms. Slime molds can be taught tricks. They may not like caffeine, salt, or strong light, but they can learn that no-go areas marked with these are not as bad as they seem, a process of habituation. Slime mold can eat plates of oatmeal but only if they cross bridges laced with noxious but harmless compounds. The slime learns to disregard those compounds and go for the oatmeal. They can remember to ignore the harmless stuff over long periods. You can even teach slime mold to learn to go through a kind of maze and remember what they have learned.
What do you think my lovelies? There was dead silence in the dining room.