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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

'Memories pass between generations' - Fascinating!

4 replies

DeckSwabber · 01/12/2013 21:23

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25156510

This might explain a lot!

OP posts:
garlictrivia · 01/12/2013 22:19

Nearly everything we do affects our DNA. That's what's so clever about it! It seems logical that these changes, or at least some of them, will be passed on with reproduction. Obviously we are born to 'know' lots of things; much of this knowledge has been passed down the generations from before there even were humans.

Just to make things even more interesting, it's now been found that pregnant women receive cells from the foetus (microchimerism.) As well as inheriting from the mother, baby gives something back! Subsequent babies, as well as passing their own cells to the mother, also receive a tiny amount of the cells 'donated' by their older siblings. So there really is a little of each child in the mother, and a little of all the older siblings in each child :)

Amazing stuff, biochemistry, innit?!

So what was your "Aha!", DeckSwabber - what did this explain for you?

DeckSwabber · 02/12/2013 07:10

Amazing, indeed!

Not really an 'aha!' moment but every day there are threads here with people struggling to make sense of their relationships with parents or partners. Maybe some people bear the traces of former conflicts and tragedies and will always react to situations more sensitively than others.

OP posts:
Meerka · 02/12/2013 07:43

Not sure we should put too much emphasis on one experiment in -mice-. There's plenty of evidence that certain things can get passed down the generations and evidence that environment can switch genes on and off in humans. But its still pretty darn fuzzy, most of it, and extrapolating that memories go down the generations from mice to humans is a big step for just one experiment. Replicate it in other species and maybe there's more weight.

DottyboutDots · 02/12/2013 10:52

Hasn't there always been a theory on inherited memory? Phobias etc?

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