Many animals can survive prolonged periods of exposure to freezing temperatures. To do this, they run a sophisticated ‘freeze’ program on the way into the frozen state, and another ‘thaw’ program on the way out. Although there have been advances in freezing and thawing animals that lack these built-in cold survival responses, it hasn’t been made clear whether important higher-level functions, like memory, would emerge unscathed.
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Ref: Persistence of Long-Term Memory in Vitrified and Revived C. elegans. Rejuvenation Research (2015) | DOI:10.1089/rej.2014.1636
Cryogenically frozen worms come back from their deep freeze and recall specific learned memories
