Author: foompy_katt

Contemplating syndromic autism – Insulting half step in the right direction. Questioning of the “spectrum”/”heterogeneous syndrome” concept is a good first step toward clear phenotypical definitions. Unfortunately it will probably be awhile before we get our collective heads out of our asses regarding the whole “behavior as a disease” stupidity. Math abilities in autism spectrum…

Astrocytic uptake of neuronal corpses promotes cell-to-cell spreading of tau pathology – This is interesting if it confirms out and tweaks things a bit. My prior assumption was that tau aggregates accumulated due to bad folds, I didn’t realize tau isn’t native to astrocytes at all. That was a huge miss on my part. Reconstituting…

We do not “induce” changes to living cells, living cells respond to external conditions. Adding a chemical or stimulation doesn’t “make the cells change”, it is the cells themselves which already have the programming to change when it receives that stimuli which change. Genetic diversity provides a distinct set of responses available to cells, even…

Pluripotent Stem Cells as a Model for Human Embryogenesis – Read this and thought it’s the manifestation of the Sci-Fi no male future societies, e.g. The Outer Limits remake (I think) or Futurama. The conceit that some miracle of miracles happens at conception to create a new life is pretty seriously questioned here, when we…

The hippocampus is a stream processor, responsible for integrating, degrading, and conforming information maps between (primary) external and (inferior) internal systems. The conformancy function is largely provided by a region of the hippocampus called the “CA2” (not to be confused with Calcium), which has a significant role in mapping and modulating “expectation” state against “current”…

Do astrocytes respond to light, sound, or electrical stimulation? – To activate maximum contrarianism I’d argue the answer to this question is no, they “respond” to changes in metabolic processes within the cells. But yes, you can manipulate those metabolic processes by changing the energetic environment around the cells. Astrocyte dysfunction and neuronal network hyperactivity…

Why have connectome projects failed so consistently in generating any useful models to predict behavior? Because connectome models are not maps of nervous systems, they are maps of a tiny sliver of neuron specific function. Nearly all connectome models at this point carry the assumptive burden that a) neurons are the primary units of calculation…

IMO, one of the most damaging conceits to our understanding of how nervous systems function is the idea that nervous systems behave in a series of sequential discrete processes. The idea that neuron a emits a particle that activates neuron b then returns to homeostasis is a naive at best metaphor for nervous system (or…

Spontaneous and multifaceted ATP release from astrocytes at the scale of hundreds of synapses – Wow, shit’s got levels. Interpreting this, astrocytes can “encourage” information from particular neurons by adjusting the amount of ATP on a synapse by synapse basis (and conversely suppress input by reducing energy). This granular control is independent of the global…