Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans
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Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans
#2I feel discoveries like this that can either be a promising lead that turns out to be nothing (e.g. mice don’t have these neurons but other animals do) or could wind up being the single biggest discovery in the study of sentience ever are the perfect example of what real science is like.
Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans
#3> A scientist named Gábor Tamás and members of his lab were studying brain cells called inhibitory neurons, which act like the brakes in a car. They tell other brain cells when to slow down.
Is this "explain it like I'm five" passage really necessary? Surely any adult would understand what an inhibitory neuron does from the name alone. Would a writer feel the need to explain the meaning of the word inhibit? Inhibition? Uninhibited? And if they did, would they do so in such childish terms?
Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans
#4> A scientist named Gábor Tamás and members of his lab were studying brain cells called inhibitory neurons, which act like the brakes in a car. They tell other brain cells when to slow down. Is this "explain it like I'm five" passage really necessary? Surely any adult would understand what an inhibitory neuron does from the name alone. Would a writer feel the need to explain the meaning of the word inhibit? Inhibitio…
Not necessarily.
I self-assess as 'fairly smart', but my neurological understanding is pretty poor, and inhibitory neuron may mean a neuron that inhibits other neurons, or a neuron that inhibits something else entirely. If that's to 'slow down' the pace of neuron activity or to actually suppress it (ie. inhibit it) isn't 100% clear from the name, either.
Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans
#5While I am usually sceptical of anything that has even a whiff of human exceptionalism, this is a fascinating result. Ed is extremely interested in and well versed in comparative neurobiology, and despite the deathgrip that Allen's PR team has on all external communication, the fact that he seems to have approved of the spin is a good sign. Second, the primary outstanding question that I have is whether we have actually sampled the population in L1 sufficiently in other species. Another (maybe unpublished?) result that has come out of Ed's group (and collaborators) is that human neurons are extremely metabolically robust. They are almost like turtle neurons, they can be patched for extended periods of time and live for days to weeks. When compared to rodents this means that this cell type might simply be living long enough to see it, and dying too quickly/being too unhealthy to patch in rodents. The transcriptomic data suggests that this might not be the case, but the results from the sequencing of marmoset cell types are not in yet, and good luck getting this data for a great ape.
Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans
#6While I am usually sceptical of anything that has even a whiff of human exceptionalism, this is a fascinating result. Ed is extremely interested in and well versed in comparative neurobiology, and despite the deathgrip that Allen's PR team has on all external communication, the fact that he seems to have approved of the spin is a good sign. Second, the primary outstanding question that I have is whether we have actua…
Once an aspect of human exceptionalism is noted, I would imagine one would look at chimpanzees as the next analogue, and not mice.
Nearest neighbor, top down, based on genetic similarity. If you’ve got something, and it seems that it’s only detected in humans, aren’t chimpanzees (or may other great apes) the gold standard for human comparative biology?
Then follow the chain, back through old world monkeys, before reaching rodentia.
Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans
#7> A scientist named Gábor Tamás and members of his lab were studying brain cells called inhibitory neurons, which act like the brakes in a car. They tell other brain cells when to slow down. Is this "explain it like I'm five" passage really necessary? Surely any adult would understand what an inhibitory neuron does from the name alone. Would a writer feel the need to explain the meaning of the word inhibit? Inhibitio…
Does an inhibitory neuron prevent other neurons from firing, negate the effect of their firing, or slow them down?
Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans
#8While I am usually sceptical of anything that has even a whiff of human exceptionalism, this is a fascinating result. Ed is extremely interested in and well versed in comparative neurobiology, and despite the deathgrip that Allen's PR team has on all external communication, the fact that he seems to have approved of the spin is a good sign. Second, the primary outstanding question that I have is whether we have actua…
>"While I am usually sceptical of anything that has even a whiff of human exceptionalism, this is a fascinating result...the primary outstanding question that I have is whether we have actually sampled the population in L1 sufficiently in other species."
What do you mean by "sufficiently"? Did they check in any animals? Did they provide a list of criteria that, if met, allow definite identification of these cells in an animal? Can you quote these parts of the paper?
Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans
#9While I am usually sceptical of anything that has even a whiff of human exceptionalism, this is a fascinating result. Ed is extremely interested in and well versed in comparative neurobiology, and despite the deathgrip that Allen's PR team has on all external communication, the fact that he seems to have approved of the spin is a good sign. Second, the primary outstanding question that I have is whether we have actua…
Once an aspect of human exceptionalism is noted, I would imagine one would look at chimpanzees as the next analogue, and not mice. Nearest neighbor, top down, based on genetic similarity. If you’ve got something, and it seems that it’s only detected in humans, aren’t chimpanzees (or may other great apes) the gold standard for human comparative biology? Then follow the chain, back through old world monkeys, before rea…
I had some old pictures of stained rodent brains and saw something looked qualitatively like what they described in the first (and only) image I checked. Since they dont give any definite criteria for me to compare against, what can I do?
Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans
#10> A scientist named Gábor Tamás and members of his lab were studying brain cells called inhibitory neurons, which act like the brakes in a car. They tell other brain cells when to slow down. Is this "explain it like I'm five" passage really necessary? Surely any adult would understand what an inhibitory neuron does from the name alone. Would a writer feel the need to explain the meaning of the word inhibit? Inhibitio…
Does an inhibitory neuron prevent other neurons from firing, negate the effect of their firing, or slow them down?
It can do any of those or the opposite. The effect of the signals from one neuron depend on the properties of the receiving neuron.
Ie, the same neurotransmitter released can be "excitatory" to neighboring neurons in one case and "inhibitory" in the next: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030645221...