61–70 of 82 posts
>They were able to obtain brain tissue from 10 mammalian species: Etruscan shrews (one of the smallest known mammals), gerbils, mice, rats, Guinea pigs, ferrets, rabbits, marmosets, and macaques, as well as human tissue removed from patients with epilepsy during brain surgery. Offbeat question: Could it be that epilepsy is a disorder caused by this missing ion channel, and this isn't true for all humans?
I heard in a lecture that populations of human neurons are able to phase-lock or resonate to an oscillating stimulus that exceeds 1000s of Hz while mouse neurons top out around 200 Hz. I haven’t been able to find citations for this. Hypothetically, the increase in temporal sensitivity might be related to the lower density of ion channels. Would a lower density of ion channels increase the capacitance of neurons?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The learning part might be right. I'm put off by the "rationality" part.
At least to me rationality is the same thing as ability to learn complex things and have those new learnings override your intuitive responses. If you have some other definition of rationality then maybe that is why you thought my post was strange.
I think this covers only a part of what the word means. There's a strong connection to (and to some even identity with) the term "reason".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason
"Reason" as a concept is deeply rooted in the enlightenment era and comes with a lot of metaphysical and historical baggage.
So, basically we're more intelligent because we're better at pumping ion.
How can I improve my ion pumping?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2735813/
It's a blessing and a curse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many animals aren't under strong pressure to increase efficiency of their brains, because these brain are small and majority of metabolism is put into very basal structures like brainstem. Birds for example were under such evolutionary pressure and look where it got them - Corvidae have 15g brain and they are much smarter than 22g squirell or 30g cat. Moreover, such choices have tradeoffs, improving efficiency often…
I do not understand this obsession people have with ranking the "smartness" of animals. Each animals has the intelligence it needs to survive in the niche it lives in. Each is as smart as it needs to be. You say a Corvidae is smarter than a squirrel, but why do you think that matters? Each species survives just fine. Would it benefit the squirrel species survival if they were "smarter"? Or would there just be more of…
Petter Watts formulated it in different manner - "all animals are under stringent selection pressure to be as stupid as they can get away with".
> Would it benefit the squirrel species survival if they were "smarter"?
Probably yes, but this benefit doesn't necessarily outweight greater metabolic cost of sustaining brain. But I was talking about efficiency. Birds achieve much higher intelligence from the same volume of brain than mammals.
I highly doubt that reducing the number of channels is a simple efficiency hack, if it was simple to just reduce the density then animals would have had lower density just like humans. The question to ask is why humans would benefit from having fewer channels while animals doesn't. My naïve hunch tells me that this could be related to rationality in some way, that weakening the ion pump signals could make it easier f…
We spend roughly 10% of our entire energy budget on those ion channels. Keeping neurons at -70mV takes a lot of work.
I heard in a lecture that populations of human neurons are able to phase-lock or resonate to an oscillating stimulus that exceeds 1000s of Hz while mouse neurons top out around 200 Hz. I haven’t been able to find citations for this. Hypothetically, the increase in temporal sensitivity might be related to the lower density of ion channels. Would a lower density of ion channels increase the capacitance of neurons?
Action potential rates and the ability to phase-lock to inputs are significantly affected by the membrane time constant. Generally, membranes with lower conductances at rest and during spiking will have higher (slower) membrane time constants. This isn't a straightforward explanation for the ability of human some neurons to phase lock to higher frequencies.
Impedance data across species relevant to this idea is in Extended Data Figure 2 and 5 of the paper.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not understand this obsession people have with ranking the "smartness" of animals. Each animals has the intelligence it needs to survive in the niche it lives in. Each is as smart as it needs to be. You say a Corvidae is smarter than a squirrel, but why do you think that matters? Each species survives just fine. Would it benefit the squirrel species survival if they were "smarter"? Or would there just be more of…
> Each is as smart as it needs to be. Petter Watts formulated it in different manner - "all animals are under stringent selection pressure to be as stupid as they can get away with". > Would it benefit the squirrel species survival if they were "smarter"? Probably yes, but this benefit doesn't necessarily outweight greater metabolic cost of sustaining brain. But I was talking about efficiency. Birds achieve much high…
Thanks for that quote. So maybe that is what humanity is doing by offloading our intelligence to machines, making ourselves stupid?
>Birds achieve much higher intelligence from the same volume of brain than mammals.
I just have a hard time supposing what "intelligence" means since human intelligence might be much different than bird intelligence. Not higher or lower, but different for different needs.