The Wikipedia page is very short: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_memory_(psychology)
And it refers to a Lamarckian process? The linked article is a little bit woolly. Are there any known studies definitively showing that genetic memory is encoded in DNA? What can be encoded? How much?
In: Biology
I mean, even saying genetics makes this a bit difficult to ELI5, but I’ll try. And since it’s ELI5, I’m going to stay high level and broad so this may be a bit inaccurate in some places for simplicity.
But it’s the idea that certain behaviours may be hardcoded into our genetics instead of learned. For the most part, genes can only significantly pass on if there’s an advantage to having them, so the implication is that some genes may give us an advantage (at living or making babies) specifically by predisposing us to certain behaviours or fears. This is a lot harder to explain with higher organisms, so let’s look at some gross-assed flies that I would never actually mention to a 5yo.
For example, certain parasitic flies lay eggs in the brains of crickets. If we literally measure the brain activity of these flies, we can see that they are born with neurons that excite far more readily when they recieve auditory input in the specific frequency of their prey —
OR, to be more ELI5, these flies are born with a brain that will, from birth, already draw them to the exact type of noise their food/sexy-time-holes make.
It’s not that these organisms need to *learn* to associate these sounds with the correct insect so that they can become effective hunters. It’s that they’re already born with a complex profile of genes that will create a brain already designed to react to and draw the flies to the crickets they so desperately want to pop a few eggs into.
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