UC Merced Undergraduate Research Journal

Research into memory transfer, the concept of taking one specimen’s experienced memory and transferring it to a naive specimen’s, dates back to the 1950s and 60s when studies first utilized forced cannibalism between specimens to theoretically achieve memory transfer (Albert, 1966;Babich et al., 1965; Braud, 1970; Jacobson et al., 1965; McConnell, 1962; reported by Bédécarrats et al., 2018). Recently, experimental research conducted by Bédécarrats et al. (2018) demonstrated the potential to transfer physiological and behavioral changes experienced by Aplysia to Aplysia not experiencing these changes, with the changes initially occurring due toconditioned fear responses to touch. In this literature review, a new paradigm will be proposed for studying memory transfer: the multimodal utility of virtual reality technologies, false memory productive paradigms, and existing physiological and behavioral measures as part of a between-subjects design. Skin conductance response and eye-tracking technologies will beexamined for their potential to observe transferred correlates, while a variety of survey measures will also be proposed for optimal use under this proposed paradigm.