Neurons unexpectedly encode information in the timing of their firing
quantamagazine.org
Neurons unexpectedly encode information in the timing of their firing
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Re: Neurons unexpectedly encode information in the timing of their firing
#2Neurophysiology and phase precession have a storied history, from the 1990's up to the Nobel Prize in 2014.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_precession
O'Keefe and Reece in 1993: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/hipo.4500303...
... [F]iring consistently began at a particular phase as the rat entered the field but then shifted in a systematic way during traversal of the field, moving progressively forward on each theta cycle... The phase was highly correlated with spatial location... [B]y using the phase relationship as well as the firing rate, place cells can improve the accuracy of place coding.
Re: Neurons unexpectedly encode information in the timing of their firing
#3That must be wrong. There are no time measuring machinery and no notion of time.
Frequency, by the way, is not a synonym for time.
Re: Neurons unexpectedly encode information in the timing of their firing
#4I find a lot of the common explanations of how the brain works in neuroscience to be unsatisfying… compared to molecular biology, it just feels like often we don’t have a solid (falsifiable, etc) grasp of what’s actually happening, yet… too much handwaving (for instance, the lack of any specifics on where precisely some data is located… even “it’s stored in the connections” seems not quite true or falsifiable… although perhaps not exactly false, either). So I find discoveries like this exciting as it’s starting to peel back the curtain on a true understanding of the brain and neurons.
Re: Neurons unexpectedly encode information in the timing of their firing
#5Motion-detecting neurons in the visual cortex need to use timing; it would be a little weird for evolution to just use that mechanism once and not try it again.
Re: Neurons unexpectedly encode information in the timing of their firing
#6I find a lot of the common explanations of how the brain works in neuroscience to be unsatisfying… compared to molecular biology, it just feels like often we don’t have a solid (falsifiable, etc) grasp of what’s actually happening, yet… too much handwaving (for instance, the lack of any specifics on where precisely some data is located… even “it’s stored in the connections” seems not quite true or falsifiable… althou…
There’s a strong bias toward things that are model-able in neuroscience.
The role of microtubules, for example, are mostly ignored even though they may explain the complexity of cognition displayed by relatively “simple” brains.
Re: Neurons unexpectedly encode information in the timing of their firing
#7I find a lot of the common explanations of how the brain works in neuroscience to be unsatisfying… compared to molecular biology, it just feels like often we don’t have a solid (falsifiable, etc) grasp of what’s actually happening, yet… too much handwaving (for instance, the lack of any specifics on where precisely some data is located… even “it’s stored in the connections” seems not quite true or falsifiable… althou…
it just feels like often we don’t have a solid (falsifiable, etc) grasp of what’s actually happening, yet…
It feels like that, because it is like that: there's probably way more which isn't known about the brain yet, than things known with a decent amount of certainty. Just skimming over recent papers in the fundamental area, a lot of that summarizes as 'So here we found that area A is connected to area B and modulated when things happen in C, so attributes to function D. But way more research needed, and unsure what this means in relation to E and F'.
Re: Neurons unexpectedly encode information in the timing of their firing
#8I find a lot of the common explanations of how the brain works in neuroscience to be unsatisfying… compared to molecular biology, it just feels like often we don’t have a solid (falsifiable, etc) grasp of what’s actually happening, yet… too much handwaving (for instance, the lack of any specifics on where precisely some data is located… even “it’s stored in the connections” seems not quite true or falsifiable… althou…
I had a crazy idea about neurons that I'll share here, because why not?
What if each time a neuron sends a signal to another neuron the potential required for that connection decreases slightly? So the next time there's an action potential between neurons it's more likely to go where it has already gone. In other words, frequent connections make that same pathway more readily traversed. Could it be that a memory is simply a new signal traveling down a 'worn path'?
I realize that there needs to be some way for this resistance change to be reset over time, so is it possible that dreams serve the purpose of writing somewhat random data, like wear leveling or trimming on an SSD?
This is just pure speculation and I have "Hello World" levels of knowledge about neuroscience. But hey, it's fun to speculate, right?
Re: Neurons unexpectedly encode information in the timing of their firing
#9I find a lot of the common explanations of how the brain works in neuroscience to be unsatisfying… compared to molecular biology, it just feels like often we don’t have a solid (falsifiable, etc) grasp of what’s actually happening, yet… too much handwaving (for instance, the lack of any specifics on where precisely some data is located… even “it’s stored in the connections” seems not quite true or falsifiable… althou…
From my understanding, the current approach is basically the idea that if you put a bunch of neurons in a room, it eventually starts questioning the universe
It really lacks nuance
Re: Neurons unexpectedly encode information in the timing of their firing
#10I find a lot of the common explanations of how the brain works in neuroscience to be unsatisfying… compared to molecular biology, it just feels like often we don’t have a solid (falsifiable, etc) grasp of what’s actually happening, yet… too much handwaving (for instance, the lack of any specifics on where precisely some data is located… even “it’s stored in the connections” seems not quite true or falsifiable… althou…
I had a crazy idea about neurons that I'll share here, because why not? What if each time a neuron sends a signal to another neuron the potential required for that connection decreases slightly? So the next time there's an action potential between neurons it's more likely to go where it has already gone. In other words, frequent connections make that same pathway more readily traversed. Could it be that a memory is s…
It sounds like you are essentially describing long-term potentiation (LTP).
See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_potentiation