The egocentric/allocentric conversion refers to the process that nervous systems use to convert our egocentric sensory information into allocentric constructs useful for making predictions about external behavior (aka, enabling coordinated social behavior). On a really high level, imagine a pack of wolves hunting. They only perceive the world from their own reference frame, but need …
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-math-that-tells-cells-what-they-are Really interesting article with quite a bit of work I hadn’t been exposed to. The tl;dr is that the traditional view of embryonic development is that organisms develop along a strictly linear pathway dictated by DNA, instead it looks like RNA expression gradients guide development. This is interesting in context of work which has …
Over the past few months I’ve been thinking a lot about the transition between alchemy and formal chemistry, and how the current state of neuroscientific thought is eerily similar to alchemic practice. While alchemic practice produced the basis for a lot of modern chemistry, the field as a whole was essentially a non-stop fraud vehicle. …
Cue the Sponge Bob/Patrick license meme. Seems like everything is biological up until the point when it needs to be magical.
DNA is an information storage molecule and DNA in and of itself does not have the ability to catalyze processes. RNA by itself is a “living” precursor to DNA, and DNA “evolved” from RNA. All cellular life requires ribosomal processes in order to translate out DNA codons. Ribozymes are an example of how RNA bridge …
For most types of dementia, there’s building evidence that high levels of astrocyte products in serum is REALLY bad, and can provide a warning signal up to 20 years before onset of significant symptoms (in the case of Alzheimers). Currently, evidence supports the association between elevated astrocyte products and Huntington’s, ALS, Multiple Sclerosis (NfL == …
In the past I’ve asserted that dementia conditions like AD were the product of advanced senescence, essentially the product of groups of cells “aging” faster than “average”, at least relative to the rest of the organism. This assumption is almost certainly wrong, and long telomere (or whatever measure of senescence we apply) dementia is not …
I try to avoid issues like this as much as possible (the interpersonal/social/political ones), but in case you were wondering why China is freaking out so bad about COVID chewing it’s own legs to prevent it’s spread it’s because COVID selectively targets astrocytes. For susceptible individuals, it’s literally a brain/body metabolism nuke, and produces dementia …
If we were going to solve some of the problems that the Neuralink team is trying to address, what pathways show the most promise? First, from a construct perspective, the device itself needs to philosophically be viewed as an astrocyte/oligo package. In conditions like Parkinsons (side rant: I really wish medicine would get over naming …
