Who froze the roundworms? What happened?
(This text is quoted with slight modifications from CRYOMSG 790 posted by Charles Platt) Gerry Arthus, Alcor New York’s Coordinator, has announced preliminary results of an experiment which was designed to investigate whether memories will survive cryonic suspension. For his experiment, Gerry used Caenorhabditis elegans, a nematode (tiny worm) that’s one of the simplest living creatures. It has a complete nervous system, however, and can be “trained” in a rudimentary way. Worms that are raised in a warm environment will “remember” it and will prefer it if they are given the choice. Conversely, worms that were raised in a cooler area will tend to prefer that environment. Gerry placed a small number of worms in a cryoprotective solution and froze them to -80 degrees Celsius for two hours. After he revived the worms, the ones that survived the experience still “remembered” their former environmental preferences. So far as we know, this is the world’s first experiment designed to verify th
