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Prediction: Within the next 10 years, Chiari/Brain Stem/fourth ventricle CSF over/under pressure issues will be found causal to most “treatment resistant” mental health etiologies. Prediction: Personality/”Agency” related behavior will be an artifact of brain stem nuclei. Prediction: Within the next five years an organelle study will demonstrate “consciousness” or “agency” using glia exclusively. Prediction: There …

Place yer bets! Irresponsibly aggressive predictions cataloged here… Read More »

Using autism as a model for neurological function is great because of the depth of histological and functional research that it enables, however as a model of species level function it still has some pretty significant gaps. I’ve spent the last day consuming just about everything I can on much more unique constructions and am …

The limits of functional connectivity Read More »

A few months ago I was thinking about making a headset which monitored frontal alpha for use in “concentration” or “attention” tasks and provided feedback when it detected changes which indicated wandering. That was abandoned because I didn’t want to figure out how to write the training software since a model would need to be …

“ADHD”/Attention Trainer Redux Read More »

The quest for a “true” AGI is an expression of our collective attempts to control our species GI. AGI will never be complete while GI is a mystery to us. Our standard for measuring the completeness of AGI is how closely it mirrors our assumptions about GI. Most AGI is designed around assumptions we have …

A(GI) Read More »

Seeking motivation and reward: Roles of dopamine, hippocampus, and supramammillo-septal pathway Still using the concept of “reward”, but it brings up interesting questions about how brains bind valence scoring on top of brain stem salience signals. Also: The cognitive aspect of information-seeking behavior, including the perception of salience and uncertainty, involves, in part, the pathways …

Hypothalamus/ Mammillary Bodies Dump Read More »

One of the strangest artifacts of perception to me is how our brains are able to transform two dimensional input into a three dimensional “feeling” for space. The assumption I’ve had in the past is that brains use pairs of place and space maps to generate coordinates in 3D space like standard euclidean spatial representations. …

Prediction/Expectation map similar to place/space maps? Read More »

Just had the thought that we’ve traditionally thought about neurotransmitters as the signalling mechanism between neurons as part of the neuron centric view of brain function. How would brains look if we viewed these chemicals as control/relay agents which enabled local signalling between distinct glial populations? Does each transmitter allow system level signalling between disparate …

The next hurdle, moving past the neuron centric brain. Read More »

Holy shit. Edit: Sorry, this is really exciting because it gives us the ability to study the brainstem and deep cerebellar nuclei in vivo, in naturalistic conditions. A few core assumptions I’m making with my current model is that all salience is generated in the brain stem, and that the cerebellum/deep cerebellar nuclei are inverse …

Remote and Selective Control of Astrocytes by Magnetomechanical Stimulation Read More »

One of the most confounding and frustrating things in brain research has to be seeing a hypothesis that looks very promising in animal models fail to translate to humans (or even other animals). Why is there such a consistent disconnect between promising research and real world application? To survive challenges over replicability teams rely on …

Lost in translation Read More »