Potentialities in the Control of Behaviour 
considers that this substance or others might affect mental states 
in such a way that a police-controlled government, by putting 
such agents in drinking water, could make propaganda more 
palatable. Hydén has summarized some of his thinking about 
the establishing of permanent memory traces as follows: 
“The modulated frequency [of nerve impulses] generated in 
a neurone by a specific stimulation is supposed to affect the 
RNA molecule and to induce a new sequence of nucleotide 
residues along the backbone of the molecule. This new distri- 
bution of components will then remain: the RNA has been 
specified. This leads also to a specification of the protein being 
formed through the mediation of this RNA. 
‘““By a combination of this specific protein with the comple- 
mentary molecule, the transmitter substance at the points of 
contact with the next neurone at the synapses 1s activated. This 
allows the coded information to pass on to this next neurone in 
the chain. The reason for the response of this next neurone is 
that the protein which had once been specified through a 
modulated frequency now responds to the same type of electrical 
pattern whenever it is repeated. The specific RNA and protein 
are constantly produced in the neurone. From a statistical 
point of view, the molecules can be estimated to furnish the 
necessary permutation possibilities to store the memory experi- 
ence of a lifetime.” 
D. Ewen Cameron has hypothesized that memory losses in 
the aged may be due to loss of RNA from their brain cells. 
At the 1962 meeting of the Society for Biological Psychiatry, 
he reported marked improvement in atherosclerotic and in 
pre-senile patients in memory tests following intravenous in- 
jection or oral administration of large doses of RNA. Advanced 
senile cases showed no improvement from this procedure. 
Hydén has analysed human anterior horn cells for RNA in 
persons aged 3 to over go. He found that the RNA increased 
significantly up to age 40 and remained more or less constant 
to age 60, after which it declined markedly. Certainly these 
investigations require thorough confirmation, but they have 
suggestive potentialities. 
343 
