phcordner · HackerTrans

Even discounting everything about the ethics, feasibility, state of our conceptual knowledge of brain function, has anyone demonstrated how a six-figure hardware suite like this https://plexon.com/plexon-systems/ is going to be miniaturized into a smartphone sized device mass produced for consumer purchase in the timetable laid out by Neuralink?

phcordner

5 lat temudiscuss

You are correct. The researchers here sequenced each vaccine starting with the bit of vaccine left in the vial after administration. The goal was to get a raw sequence of the Moderna mRNA component so it can be easily filtered out as being a signal of therapeutic origin. Pfizer's sequence has already been published; it's incldued here to confirm that the result achieved experimentally matches the published sequence.

phcordner

5 lat temudiscuss

The human-octopus most recent common ancestor was an ancient organism from hundreds of million years ago. It would have been one of the earlier organisms to have bilateral symmetry and an embryonic development characterized by the three germ layers we have today.

If you have a dog and have been to the aquarium you're likely to already intuit that octopuses do something that looks a lot like sleeping and that animals all the way down the family tree have periods of quiet and active sleep as well. The researchers here use a combination of observational techniques to suggest that the octopus sleep states observed are analogous to sleep in the vertebrate.

The research paper as published does not explicitly mention dreaming, rather it is one of a host of processes implied when the researchers analogize the 'active sleep' behavior observed in the octopus to animal REM sleep patterns. The conclusion spells out the possible connection to the 'metabolic detoxification' and 'cognitive processing' functions of vertebrate REM sleep but does not state them definitively.

The general media news article and the research paper have some slight differences because of their different intended audiences, but litigating that divide is best left to those already doing it: the esteemed scholars of the Dunning-Krueger Institute at Wikipedia University.

phcordner

5 lat temudiscuss

Okay man, cool. Let me know when your open-brain Dr. Mephisto trials disproving adult DA neurogenesis are written up in Nature

Edit: the title’s not even misleading; “Parkinson’s” modifies “gene,” not “neurons” so it’s not even saying anything about the location of these neurons or when they are being created!

phcordner

5 lat temudiscuss

In neurobiology, human in vivo studies are prohibitive from a cost, logistical, and ethical standpoint. But to anyone who can successfully parse a neurobiology paper this is assumed knowledge.

phcordner

5 lat temudiscuss

This is also addressed in the paper:

"Zebrafish are a particularly valuable tool to study neurogenesis in vertebrates. Basal levels of neurogenesis occur at higher levels than in mammals, and additional proliferative zones are found throughout the brain"

In the zebrafish model, which yes, is different from the human brain, the researchers specifically demonstrate that neurogenesis is occurring in dopaminergic regions throughout life:

"... we demonstrate that ascending TPp DA neurons and local-projecting PVO neurons, but not magnocellular ascending DA neurons, are each generated into adulthood in wild type animals at a rate that decreases with age."

PINK1 deficiency slows the rate of the generation of DA neurons in zebrafish. Following this result, they then turned to the question of applicability to human systems by testing PINK1 deficiency on a culture of human midbrain organoids and successfully showed that this gene downregulated the size these organoids reached, demonstrating that this gene has an effect on neurogenesis of human dopaminergic neurons from the substantia nigra.

"Isolated observations in animal models of PD always raise concerns about the applicability of any results to human patients with this condition. However, the observation of impairment of DA neurogenesis in a PINK1-deficient, human tissue derived organoid model confirmed the initial observations."

phcordner

5 lat temudiscuss

First line of the abstract of the paper:

>Recent evidence suggests neurogenesis is on-going throughout life but the relevance of these findings for neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) is poorly understood.

phcordner

5 lat temudiscuss

I see the "geopolitical" angle again and it's still not vindicated by this announcement. Nothing that Gelsinger said indicated he came to those decisions by seeing what was cookin' on the threat board:

> We are committed to ensuring this capacity will support commercial customers, as well as address unique government and security requirements in the U.S.

Geographic distribution makes a certain amount of business sense and getting those nice DoD contracts makes even more.

What doesn't make sense is China having Wing Attack Plan R ready to go against TSMC and Samsung.

phcordner

5 lat temudiscuss

Interesting hypothesis, why not take the bus down to your local high school and test it out?

phcordner

5 lat temudiscuss

How? A worm is a whole multicellular organism. A neuron's just a cell, one that's specialized into a single function.

All a single neuron does is pass a signal to the synaptic cleft in response to a chemical or electrical signal at the other end. It's a simple subunit of a larger system.

Saying a single neuron is more complex than a worm is like saying a cat6 ethernet cable is more complex than a blast furnace.

phcordner

5 lat temudiscuss

pg is a known fan of the cancel culture complaint think tank industrial complex

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