71–80 of 82 posts
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You can give yourself Bipolar Disoder... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2735813/ It's a blessing and a curse.
Sounds like GP just needs to ingest some anti-lithium.
>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?
In general, epileptic disorders are observed across species. It's common in dogs, for instance: https://www.akcchf.org/canine-health/top-health-concerns/epi...
A ton of papers examining ion channel expression in epilepsy that should be more relevant: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=human+ion+channel+epil...
>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?
Or the ion channel deficit was a side-effect of anti-seizure drugs often given to people with epilepsy, or a side-effect of having seizures, or ... Presumably there is some "gotta be ultra-fresh" reason why they aren't taking just tissue from cadavers donated to medical schools. But this study sounds like it was pretty crappy science, even before the MIT press office folks got hold of it.
This is top-notch science, but might be hard for people to appreciate.
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> I don't think you understand how science works I have some understanding of how science works. The purpose remains to find plausible explanations to phenomena, explanations that show some solidity. The same value - linked to grounds - remains valid for statements in general. This is why we refine them, in the internal "lab", where they are tried under duress of criticism. Which is scientific process.
And how is "weakening the electric signals between cells makes it easier for cells to alter the message and therefore might give rise to stronger forms of learning" not a plausible link? It costs more energy to ignore a stronger signal, making it harder for cells to learn to change input signals. Humans having weaker signals could therefore be related to our ability to learn, while animals could have stronger signals…
"making it harder for cells to learn to change input signals." this sentence is not even wrong; it essentially presumes that the default behavior is to "not change input signals", which is definitely not how neurons work.
"Humans having weaker signals could therefore be related to our ability to learn" - perhaps, but you provide no argument about the direction of causality there (if it's related, perhaps the weaker signals are caused by a different level of learning), nor for elevation of "could be" from mere possibility to why it's likely to be the case.
I'm not saying that there is no way that your hypothesis could be right, but you do need to pass a certain (quite high) bar of clearly stating your assumptions and demonstrating that all of the assumptions are reasonable before your hypothesis would be worth reviewing and evaluating, and there is very a big gap between "possible" and "plausible".
Consider what ion channels are evolutionarily. Gaps between cells. The first proto brains were colonies of cells that lived communally and expressed logic through group dynamics. Think of a colony of cells on a rock under the ocean. As the sun moves across the sky, the cells have to make a decision to move to the more exposed face of the rock to maximise the capture of solar radiation. The cells have to communicate b…
This is, in a sense, a microcosm of the argument in Daniel Dennet’s “Consciousness Explained.” To oversimplify (and potentially butcher): consciousness results from innumerable “drafts” or guesses arising from neural interpretation of sensory input. From Wikipedia, describing the book: ‘The brain consists of a "bundle of semi-independent agencies";[3] when "content-fixation" takes place in one of these, its effects m…
- Accepts Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" without skepticism
- Aims for a scientific theory to be "respectable"
- Concludes that because sensory input to a brain seems infeasible using 1990 simulation tech (Not considering advances, using sensors etc), simulating reality to a brain isn't possible; Makes a comparison to a ladder-to-the-moon.
>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?
If true, that would be an embarrassing oversight in the study as well as possibly #1 in one of those "Top 10 accidental scientific discoveries that changed everything" articles.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is, in a sense, a microcosm of the argument in Daniel Dennet’s “Consciousness Explained.” To oversimplify (and potentially butcher): consciousness results from innumerable “drafts” or guesses arising from neural interpretation of sensory input. From Wikipedia, describing the book: ‘The brain consists of a "bundle of semi-independent agencies";[3] when "content-fixation" takes place in one of these, its effects m…
Picked up this book just now... Seems full of red flags. In the first few pages: - Accepts Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" without skepticism - Aims for a scientific theory to be "respectable" - Concludes that because sensory input to a brain seems infeasible using 1990 simulation tech (Not considering advances, using sensors etc), simulating reality to a brain isn't possible; Makes a comparison to a ladder-to-t…
What do you mean by 'accepts Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" without skepticism?'