Author name: foompy_katt

Isn’t it kind of bizarre that *everyone* goes through their entire lives not understanding their own behavior?

I suppose this thought was the genesis of this subreddit, but this question has really started coming into focus over the last few days for me. We have these extremely top level concepts and assumptions, but for most people understanding how they’ve formed any particular behavior beyond the most top level experience is a complete …

Isn’t it kind of bizarre that *everyone* goes through their entire lives not understanding their own behavior? Read More »

Updating the Map – Cerebellum and DCN edition

Controlling absence seizures from the cerebellar nuclei via activation of the Gq signaling pathway What does it look like when we tweak the DCN side/Cerebellum side of the equation? Early Cerebellar Development in Relation to the Trigeminal System I really wish there was more of this early developmental data available, understanding the developmental priority adds …

Updating the Map – Cerebellum and DCN edition Read More »

Autism as a model for healthy brain function

One of the most persistently frustrating things for me is how poorly we understand what “normal” or “healthy” brain function looks like, despite the fixation on what is “unhealthy” or “disordered”. Not to get too Maslow here (or maybe), the obsession with crippled brains is resulting in crippled philosophy. I started researching brains in general …

Autism as a model for healthy brain function Read More »

A tale of two brains? “General” vs. “Specific”?

Something which has been bugging me recently is the mechanics of “unconscious” behavior. My current model for this is that unconscious behavior represents well defined engrams for the behavior which needs to be executed, and requires subthreshold energy activation for loading into consciousness. I think current evidence supports the formation of engrams via reverse hebbian …

A tale of two brains? “General” vs. “Specific”? Read More »

Brain Dump – 03/18/2022, Hippocampus, Astrocytes, and you, oh my.

Ventral hippocampal shock encoding modulates the expression of trace cued fear Whoa, there’s a TON in this one and I need to follow up on, but this bit caught me by total surprise: Contextual fear learning was largely intact, although a subset of animals in each sex were differentially affected by shock-silencing. A meta-analysis of …

Brain Dump – 03/18/2022, Hippocampus, Astrocytes, and you, oh my. Read More »

Research Topic: Genetic transmissibility of learned behavior

Are some genetic traits flexibly encoded via sperm? Is this a selective mechanic which enables greater response to environmental conditions? Crap, should have said engram ensembles instead of behavior. Poopy! Edit: Specifically, if engrams are flexibly encodable in DNA via male sperm, exactly what types of engrams can be encoded, what level of complexity can …

Research Topic: Genetic transmissibility of learned behavior Read More »

Why is the ability to learn/create new constructs so limited in most (human) brains?

This question may be unanswerable at this time because data for cerebellar and brain stem contributions is unavailable, but this has bugged me for quite some time.Why aren’t all brains autodidactic “polymath” by default? It seems pretty likely that there is a gating mechanism being enforced somewhere on our ability to learn that is invisible …

Why is the ability to learn/create new constructs so limited in most (human) brains? Read More »

Scroll to Top