aplysia

In the case of Aplysia, this ‘vector problem’ doesn’t really arise, but that’s because Aplysia has a minimalistic nervous system.

He talks about his early work with aplysia and contemporary research into the basis of memory.

Take the example of using RNA to transfer memory from one Aplysia to another.

Living creatures, like the Aplysia californica snail studied by Eric Kandel, make use of analogously pretty damn simple mechanisms for reasonably sophisticated behaviour.

Simple animals have been studied for decades from aplysia to the mouse.

Heck you can train Aplysia to be an expert!

— involved giving mild electrical shocks to the marine snail Aplysia californica.

We don't know for sure, and we don't know where to draw the line (fish, insects, aplysia, bacteria?), but it seems reasonable to believe higher mammals have awareness (which is distinct from language, tool use, self-reflection, Theory of Mind, etc).

My training was before the more recent work with Aplysia, but "RNA memory transfer in planaria" was presented as an example of "how to make big claims with irreproducible experiments" in grad school.

The paper was Neuronal Transcriptome of Aplysia: Neuronal Compartments and Circuitry by Moroz This was a decade ago.

This might be entirely reasonable though (I know nothing about working with Aplysia).