There is a thing called cellular memory. It is not something they recall with their minds but the scars of those times live on at the cellular level and affect their responses to life. It can be handed down from generation to generation.
Cellular memory
Cellular memory is an additional hypothesis that memories can be stored outside the brain. However, unlike body memory, the cellular memory hypothesis states that these memories are stored in all the cells of human bodies, not in the bodies’ organs.
[5] The idea that non-brain tissues can have memories is also believed by some individuals who have received
organ transplants, though this is also considered impossible.
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Studies done by biologists at Tufts University have been able to train worms despite the loss of the brain and head, this may confirm memory is stored in other parts of the body. A worm reduced to 1/279th of the original worm can be regrown within a few weeks and show signs of training, by heading towards light and open space in order to search for food, an unnatural and dangerous behaviour, that can be trained in a few weeks. With each head removed, the speed of which the individual remembers seems to increase. Reducing training times. This may be a proof of body memory, muscle memory or may just be a sign of epigenetics showing the appearance of memory. [Anthony, Sebastian.
"Decapitated worms can regenerate their brains, and the memories stored inside".]
In the 1950s and 1960s
James McConnell conducted experiments on
flatworms to measure how long it took them to learn a maze. McConnell trained a group of flatworms to move around a maze and then chopped them into small pieces and fed them to an untrained group of worms. The untrained group learned to complete the maze faster compared to other worms that had not been fed the trained worms. McConnell believed the experiment indicated a form of cellular memory.
[6] It was later shown that the training involved stressing the worms with electric shocks to avoid mistakes in the maze. This kind of stress releases hormones that stay in the body. Similar experiments with mice being trained in a maze and being fed to untrained mice also showed improved learning.
[6]
