Table of Contents: Nature Reviews Neuroscience
October 2014 Vol 15 No 10
Excerpt from: Research Highlights: Learning and memory: Uncoupling memory traces
“The emotional valence of a memory can be changed, and this probably involves a change in the connectivity between hippocampal and amygdalar memory traces.”
My comment: 1) The connectivity change is epigenetically-effected by olfactory/pheromonal input. 2) Epigenetically-effected RNA-mediated events link the epigenetic landscape to the physical landscape of DNA in species from microbes to man. 3) Conserved molecular mechanisms link ecological variation to ecological adaptations via amino acid substitutions. 4) The substitutions differentiate all cell types in all individuals of all species. 5) They stabilize DNA in organized genomes. 6) The nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled receptor-mediated physiology of reproduction links ecological variation to the de novo Creation of odor receptor genes. 7) The RNA-mediated de novo Creation of genes links ecological variation to ecological adaptations manifested in the morphological and behavioral phenotypes of species from microbes to man.
The Laws of Physics prevent genes from creating themselves, which means they cannot create different behaviors. Instead, for example, epigenetic effects on hormones lead to hormone-organized and hormone-activated behaviors in vertebrates and invertebrates.
The honeybee is the model organism that best exemplifies how nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled ecological variation is linked directly from receptor-mediated events and RNA-mediated events to hormone-dependent ecological adaptations without the pseudoscientific nonsense of mutations, natural selection, and the evolution of biodiversity.
Biodiversity is biophysically-constrained by the availability of nutrients and the innate ability of cells to metabolize nutrients and to signal other cells that they have successfully done that in ever-changing environments.
If not for the invention of neo-Darwinism by population geneticists, evolutionary theorists could never have convinced anyone to believe in their pseudoscientific nonsense and everyone would believe the biological facts about learning and memory, which link conserved molecular mechanisms to species diversity.
Instead, we see the claim (above): “The emotional valence of a memory can be changed, and this probably involves a change in the connectivity between hippocampal and amygdalar memory traces.”
????Probably involves a change in the connectivity?????
Everything currently know about ecological, social, neurogenic, and socio-cognitive niche construction manifested in increasing organismal complexity attests to how changes in neuronal connectivity link ecological variation to ecological adaptations via conserved molecular mechansims in species from microbes to man. There is no reason for biologists to rely on caveats like ‘probably involves‘ when nothing suggests that probability is involved in the links from experience-dependent de novo Creation of genes to epigenetically-effected behaviors in all genera.
How has generation after generation of pseudoscientists and serious scientists been convinced that the de novo Creation of genes is not experience-dependent? Ask one. Jay R. Feierman claims “I am absolutely certain that if you showed this statement to any professor of biology or genetics in any accredited university anywhere in the world that 100% of them would say that “Random mutations are the substrate upon which directional natural selection acts” is a correct and true statement.” What experimental evidence of biologically-based cause and effect convinced any professor of biology or genetics in any accredited university anywhere in the world that mutations lead to natural selection and the evolution of biodiversity? That was a ridiculous theory invented by population geneticists, and it should never have been accepted by serious scientists.
