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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

#31

Post by moftz »

Retric wrote: post #21
kanzure wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't expect the number of human autopsies to be more than a few million over the entire history of the human species. Nobody looks at human brains. It's a huge problem.

US alone does over 3 million autopsies a decade so it’s easily 10’s of millions over human history. The issue in terms of science is the vast majority of these have nothing to do with scientific research.

Right, no one is doing mouse autopsies to determine the murder weapon but we don't wholesale kill humans in the quest for scientific research either. Don't discount a medical examiner's job as not being science. They aren't discovering new cells in the body but they are more akin to a GP doctor (versus a clinical research doctor). Just like your GP doctor, they can read the latest medical research, try new techniques and practices, and report experiences at conferences. Or they can work out of a 1950's handbook. But just like an engineer that can't be bothered to adapt to new technology, they are quickly going to fall behind their peers.

Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans

#32

Post by vinceguidry »

I'm quite curious as to what provides for the kinds of mental 'structures' that make for so much of our inner lives.

This is an old blog post, and seems to have lost the formatting, but this is the concept I'm pointing to:

https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2004/07/31/pillar-management...

The conclusions we come to, wind up constraining the thought space of our future thoughts. I believe this cognitive process demands explanation.

Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans

#33

Post by tormeh »

cicero wrote: post #27
hyperion2010 wrote: post #5

While 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…

> I am usually sceptical of anything that has even a whiff of human exceptionalism Why are you skeptical? There is clearly a huge leap in rational intelligence when you go from other animals to humans. I would expect we would eventually find a reason for it.

>There is clearly a huge leap in rational intelligence when you go from other animals to humans

Citation needed. Monkeys/apes even fight wars between tribes. All differences between humans and other animals seem to be purely quantitative. I'm sure the difference between your average cat and the smartest species of non-human monkeys/apes are greater than the difference between the smartest species of non-human monkeys/apes and your average human.

Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans

#34

Post by TangoTrotFox »

newsbinator wrote: post #26
ComputerGuru wrote: post #2

I 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.

When has it ever been the latter?

Penicillin was pretty big. Amusing discovery too. As penicillin is fundamentally a derivative of the blue-green mold that can appear on decaying matter, the idea of injecting it into yourself to combat bacterial infections is something that few would believe. It only began to be regularly used some 14 years after its discovery, even the discover rapidly shared and published his findings.

On the other hand, maybe these discoveries are a bit different. It seems the big discoveries often come in the form of falsifying previously held beliefs rather than immediately introducing novel 'actionable' discoveries. For instance Mercury's orbit goes off by a pesky 0.01 degree change per century that could not be accounted for by Newtonian planetary mechanics. That falsification is perhaps at least part of the long chain of events that would culminate in the discovery of relativity.

Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans

#35

Post by [deleted] »

Someone wrote: post #11

”It is still possible that these newly identified neurons will also be found the brains of primates like monkeys or chimps, Lein says.” Possible and, in my universe, quite a bit more likely than that these cells are “unique to humans” (cursorily reading the paper, these scientists didn’t even look for this type of cell in anything but humans, but only claim that, if rodents had them, they would have been found there,…

[deleted]

Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans

#36

Post by snapspans »

stult wrote: post #18
hyperpallium wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic, if humans had them, they would have been found before now, given the amount of time spent looking at human brains. It seems you have to be looking in the right place, in the right way, for the right thing. But it's wrong to knock a new discovery - even if not unique to humans, it's still a discovery. Let's celebrate the feature for itself, not benefits that might follow.

There's probably been orders of magnitude more time spent analyzing rodent brains, simply because there is an effectively unlimited quantity available and an extremely limited quantity of human brains available. Essentially all invasive human brain studies are preceded by animal model studies (usually starting with rodents before proceeding to "higher" animals if that's called for), but conversely not all animal mode…

Uniqueness as an artifact caused by limits on current knowledge is a salient point. To give an idea of the state of the art in the understanding of living brains, this page presents a pie chart of known neuron types by species:

http://neuromorpho.org/byspecies.jsp

Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans

#37

Post by travmatt »

tormeh wrote: post #33
cicero wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am usually sceptical of anything that has even a whiff of human exceptionalism Why are you skeptical? There is clearly a huge leap in rational intelligence when you go from other animals to humans. I would expect we would eventually find a reason for it.

>There is clearly a huge leap in rational intelligence when you go from other animals to humans Citation needed. Monkeys/apes even fight wars between tribes. All differences between humans and other animals seem to be purely quantitative. I'm sure the difference between your average cat and the smartest species of non-human monkeys/apes are greater than the difference between the smartest species of non-human monkeys…

I wonder how dolphins and elephants would compare to human intelligence if they had vocals pathways capable of speaking and limbs capable of grasping.

Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans

#38

Post by SubiculumCode »

buntress wrote: post #6
hyperion2010 wrote: post #5

While 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…

If money and logistics were not an issue, you might be right about it being the most logical step, but primate research is not something that is largely accessible to most researchers. In any case, a null in rodents tends to put a limit on how out from humans such a neuron goes, and they are cheap to work with.

Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans

#39

Post by SubiculumCode »

buntress wrote: post #13
adrianN wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot cheaper and ethically less problematic to use lab rats instead of apes, so that's what we usually do.

Well, yeah, but ape brains from deceased apes in captivity are probably short-listed for science experiments and not cremation or natural burial. So it’s probably less difficult than finding a match for an organ donor, no? I think they have some currency to start a search for samples, with this first stage finding. But really, as we’re finding out, replication will be important too.

Let's say you have rats and human brain samples and are ready to present a finding. Do you hold off until you find an ape brain, find expertise in dealing with ape brains (if reqiured), deal with IRB issues related to using those materials, run the tests, then publish? Obviously not. You use this preliminary work to run a more definitive series of experiments. This is how science works..as a series of studies, not a single definitive study.

Re: Newly Discovered 'Rose Hip' Neurons May Be Unique To Humans

#40

Post by SubiculumCode »

moftz wrote: post #31
Retric wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US alone does over 3 million autopsies a decade so it’s easily 10’s of millions over human history. The issue in terms of science is the vast majority of these have nothing to do with scientific research.

Right, no one is doing mouse autopsies to determine the murder weapon but we don't wholesale kill humans in the quest for scientific research either. Don't discount a medical examiner's job as not being science. They aren't discovering new cells in the body but they are more akin to a GP doctor (versus a clinical research doctor). Just like your GP doctor, they can read the latest medical research, try new techniques…

We don't remove the brain from someone murdered because they likely didn't give researchers permission to do so. Moreover, to study cells requires some skills not found at the coroner's.
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