When I first started on this path, I think one of my primary questions (whether I was aware of it or not) was not so much “How do brains work?” but “How does behavior work?”. I think this is largely shaped by the view of nervous systems as facilitators of behavior, rather than interesting in …
Inspired by: Generation of Urine-Derived Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells and Cerebral Organoids for Modeling Down Syndrome We rarely think about how casually we discard our DNA, but it’s… everywhere. Particularly interesting is something like this where they grew a “simulated” brain made out of cells reverted to pluripotency derived from urine. The limits on what …
Black Mirror Story Time #2: Pissing Away a New You Read More »
Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders: biomarker discovery using plasma proteomics Glial cell activity in cardiovascular diseases and risk of acute myocardial infarction – So much better than a broken heart. Complement proteins levels in serum astrocyte-derived exosomes are associated with cognitive impairment in obstructive sleep apnea – Huh. I think at the very least, there’s …
(Going to need to piecemeal this together, so bear with me it’s in progress.) This is a look at high level processing, somewhat closer to what most of CogSci/Neuroscience is focused on. Underlying this high level processing are the core conceits which assume that: a) All functions of an organism are a specialization/complexification of features …
(This is badly written, will re-write it soon) Despite being one of the core tools in CogNeuro, and a wildly popular pop science concept, “brain waves” are as “made up” as scientology’s e-reader (I think that’s what it’s called). To be fair, a lot of my early research into the mechanics of brains leaned really …
EEG “Brain Waves” are mostly noise and don’t really exist. Read More »
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)01570-7 This is a direct extension of the current book. It’s essentially the same core argument as those in the book. My feelings about the conceit, that aging is caused by lack of cellular differentiation ability in mammals, has not been adequately demonstrated, and I’m skeptical.
This book was recommended to me by a denizen of r/longevity. Fair warning, my expectations are NOT high. I am not interested in reading this book, and the odds of this review coming across as anything other than shitting on the author are low (even though that is not my intention – I have great …
Book Club Episode #3 – Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To Read More »
Not just in the macro sense, but your guts have adapted to receive direct metabolic messages from the archaea and bacteria inside of you. It’s not inappropriate to say that those organisms attempt to modify your behavior on a low level as much as any functional group in your body does. We have pretty clear …
Let’s assume that the primary innovation between eukaryotes and prokaryotes is that eukaryotes have the ability to store and compare state information, rather than simply respond to it. Perhaps it’s even appropriate to state that a defining property of eukaryotes is “memory”. In prokaryotes, external influences act directly upon internal processes, e.g. RNA translation is …
Are mitochondria more appropriately conceived as state comparators? Read More »
