Thinking about the effectiveness of lithium for cycling “disorders”. Does lithium hijack NKA pump? Seems like it steps on one side of the pump. What does it feel like on lithium while bipolar? It’s weird how deep in the well it’s necessary to go when trying to find the effects of these substances on “normal” people. I’m wondering what a rubidium pump component would look like?
I’ve come to the realization that the brain is pretty agnostic to the type of stimulation it receives, it regards energy as energy. It turns out even vibration is adequate to provide stimulation. I’ve seen this suggested as a treatment option for dementias, I assumed that the mechanic of these was it was literally shaking loose the metabolic wastes and giving the glymphatic system a chance to more efficiently clear those wastes. I’m wondering if frequency of vibration makes a significant difference – I should do the math to figure out the energy transfer equivalent to treatment effective TMS/DCS levels. Could we use a speaker with decent directionality attached to the skull at specific frequencies?
Promote vascular system as equal weight signaling network to neuron network.
Species level social characteristics as analog for astrocyte network interaction/weighting process?
Neurons don’t store information directly, they are modified to suit local astrocyte environment (e.g. signal rectification).
Vascular system is the fastest global signalling system at ~2secs for full up state change. Focusing on magnocellular release should give base activation states for full up system.
Why? It’s like extremities are kind of an “afterthought” in vertebrates. We see this with phantom limb or control of artificial limbs our circuitry for extremities is surprisingly flexible, perhaps because they are ultimately least vital. Which gives rise to the question, is there a pecking order among astrocyte types for dominance? Are astrocytes from earlier points in development weighted higher, thus biasing resolution toward neural crest structures? We should see histologic evidence of astrocyte control cluster boundaries. Maybe we’ve been looking at these the whole time?
Do astrocytes drive recursive self awareness? How many levels of recursive self awareness to hit “consciousness”? Can we determine histologically how many levels of self awareness an organism is experiencing?
Wow. This recursive self-awareness concept is kind of intriguing. It implies that behavioral presentation/personality is the result of a patchwork consciousness, some components with more/less levels of self-awareness than others. Which ends up being consistent with the model because it supports bottom up accumulation of effect. I wonder if there is an already described physiological state which is the equivalent to some type of control over levels of awareness?
So are we at something like millions of levels of self-awareness? Billions of levels? There must be a specific mechanism to enable this, not something generalizable without a huge waste of energy.. Inherent property of bi-directional gap junctions maybe?
How long would it take for writing (permanent intergenerational information transfer) to develop among non-human animals who were exposed to the rigorous behavioral training that humans engage in? Does this already exist but we don’t know what to look for?
It’s a really interesting experience reading about topics with a time filter. It makes certainty of belief in anything seem anachronistic.
Cycles and circles are absolutely terrible metaphors.
Astrocytes offer explanations to so many parts of human phenomenology, from religion to dementia. Would be interesting to do a quick run through here.
Need to look up TMS efficacy for epilepsy relief. Shouldn’t stimulating astrocytes completely suppress that activity?
We might have a mechanic for males transferring environmental/”epigenetic” information through GDNF, which controls spermatogenesis.
INTERESTING. Internal vividness is a completely disconnected process from synesthesia, e.g. It is possible to be synesthetic while being deaf, blind, or even aphantastic.
Huh. Hyperlexia is a type of synesthesia.
What’s the commonality of mechanic between types of synesthesia and “hallucinations”?
Osteoporosis is caused by defective astrocytic signaling.
Does the cerebrum store “sensory metaphors” as quanta, while cerebellum stores something more specific?
The primary driver of speciation is intra-group competition rather than external selective effects.
It’s a bit ironic to think I might be one of those blind scientists, these observations far too narrow in scope to confidently state it knows anything about the system as a whole.
“Instantiation speed of brain networks (by nuclei?)” (is this a thing)?
Does recency bias actually exist in brains? Artifact of activation energy and LIFO storage?
We are currently in the throes of the lead generation. Pretty much everyone born before 1980 is now working through the effects of essentially a lifetime of heavy metal poisoning in the brain stem. Worst part is it’s happening on such a massive scale and the effects are so pervasive, we don’t even recognize it happening.
The worst part is that over the last 30 years some other systemically pervasive factor has been added which is causing similar/worse effects than even lead was. Our carelessness is killing us.
The general understanding that metabolisms slow down as we age is really interesting contextually against glial metabolic management of the nervous system.