Author: foompy_katt

Thinking about the mechanics of how astrocytes produce discrete associations for a broad range of stimuli. Discreteness of memory is an artifact of access to these non coding regions. Cultural similarities/affinities are an artifact of similar DNA pairings across these non-coding regions. Loss of access results in dementia. Memory as a whole requires these non-coding…

Trying to figure out exactly how much of the limbic system is replicated in the deep cerebellar nuclei, my suspicion is all of it but need more information. Also, are layers 4-6 of cerebral cortex reciprocated across the posterior lobe of the cerebellum? Been awhile so looking for physiology updates as well. Second level question…

I’ve been kind of amused by the thought over the last week that one of the artifacts of understanding brain function from a metabolic/genetic level is that we are going to cross the rubicon into an era of truly customized drugs. And seeing how much our brains heavily bias toward good/bad things, once we understand…

Genetically diverse vs. genetically identical model pools – we massively overweight findings due to identical models. Control group fuckery – Most control groups are segregated by “have trait” or “don’t” which requires pre-sorting and biasing. If trait exists, it should be visible in control group and it’s visibility in the control group helps validate the…

The prevailing understanding of how synapses work is driven by a fairly low resolution understanding of cellular mechanics. Rather than “neuron to neuron” communication, or even “tripartite” communication, imagine the synapse as having thousands of individual peptide communication channels, each which transmit or internalize a different signal. Traditional neurotransmitters do not contain messages themselves, instead…

One of the experiments I’ve been working to implement is designing an inexpensive focused ultra sound helmet which can both image and target specific structures in the brain. The construct was that I was going to try to split the groups into generic targets based on morphology of the various structures and test stimulation vs.…

Just had a quick thought, we’ve assumed that the point of myelin is insulation of signal under the electric brain construct. As I’m currently not very hot on that construct (to the point I’m extremely certain it’s an inaccurate understanding of mechanics), what if the actual mechanic of myelin is to perform metabolic sustainment of…

Insight into the Mammalian Aquaporin Interactome Tau target identification reveals NSF-dependent effects on AMPA receptor trafficking and memory formation AlphaFold Protein Structure Database: massively expanding the structural coverage of protein-sequence space with high-accuracy models The structural coverage of the human proteome before and after AlphaFold The AlphaFold Database of Protein Structures: A Biologist’s Guide Optogenetic…

Popular models of how “memory” works makes as much sense to me as most theodicies. Even with constructs like engrams, where we assume that certain configuration of electrical pulses get magically integrated into something coherent somewhere else in the network is really incoherent in the face of the evidence. “Memory” is a consistent and necessary…