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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday May 08 2018, @06:08AM   Printer-friendly
from the on-or-off dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3941

As the brain grows and develops, nerve cells must make connections between one another in order to function properly. Brain cells are tightly packed together, so each cell might touch hundreds or thousands of other cells, and yet those cells only make stable and strong connections with a fraction of those neighboring cells. Researchers have long puzzled over how the probing finger-like neuronal protrusions called filopodia decide on the right place to land and make a stable link. Now researchers at Jefferson (Philadelphia University + Thomas Jefferson University) have shown that a single molecule makes the yes-or-no decision at each touch with a neighboring neuron.

The new research was published in the Cell Press journal Neuron, and could have implications for our understanding of synapse-related diseases such as autism, Down syndrome, addiction or epilepsy.

"We've shown here that one molecule can both repel unproductive contacts and connect where appropriate based on the kinds of signals that pass through that molecule," said senior author on the paper Matthew Dalva, PhD, Professor of Neuroscience at The Vickie & Jack Farber Institute for Neuroscience and Director of the Synaptic Biology Center at Jefferson (Philadelphia University + Thomas Jefferson University). "This molecule is the only molecule we know of that can both repel and connect synapses."

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180503142833.htm

Yu-Ting Mao, Julia X. Zhu, Kenji Hanamura, Giuliano Iurilli, Sandeep Robert Datta, Matthew B. Dalva. Filopodia Conduct Target Selection in Cortical Neurons Using Differences in Signal Kinetics of a Single Kinase. Neuron, 2018; DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2018.04.011


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday May 08 2018, @10:32AM (18 children)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday May 08 2018, @10:32AM (#676978) Homepage
    If you're teaching your child *your* religion, one that it hasn't chosen to be part of itself, then you're doing it wrong. The way a child should grow is by questioning, testing, verifying, disputing, denying, discovering, filtering, etc., and basically gaining the ability to think for itself, not by being brainwashed by parents and taught fake facts by rote. However, if you are going to indoctrinate kids with tales of feeble superheroes from bronze-age mythologies, please at least teach them about Santa, the tooth fairy, the easter bunny, and all that other shit, so that they can one-by-one, or wholesale, reject them all for what they are.
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday May 08 2018, @10:54AM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday May 08 2018, @10:54AM (#676983) Homepage
    Parenting done right, as overheard in a gological cave museum recently:

    Staff to 7-year-old kid: sometimes you can see fairies dancing around behind the drapery at the back of the cave
    Kid: I don't believe in fairies, I trust what I see from science.

    Which makes her smarter than Arthur Conan Doyle (not going to give him the honour of a "Sir", why should the fact that some unelected toff wants to reward an imperialist arselicker cause me to change how I refer to a person?)
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  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday May 08 2018, @12:01PM (1 child)

    by Bot (3902) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @12:01PM (#676994) Journal

    > The way a child should grow is by questioning, testing, verifying
    You are a funny guy. Anything concerning the verifiability of god is a (false) religion.

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    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday May 08 2018, @05:10PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday May 08 2018, @05:10PM (#677094) Homepage
      Well, that's just your opinion, non-man.
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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 08 2018, @01:58PM (14 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @01:58PM (#677017)

    The way a child should grow is by questioning, testing, verifying, disputing, denying, discovering, filtering, etc.

    I agree with everything you just said, while still noting that those values are their own philosophy/religion virtually indistinguishable from other philosophies/belief systems when viewed from outside.

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    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday May 08 2018, @03:18PM (7 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @03:18PM (#677042) Journal

      That's bullshit. Name me one religion that encourages that. And don't say Buddhism.

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      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 08 2018, @03:41PM (6 children)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @03:41PM (#677052)

        We can start with the cult of science. Faith in peer reviewed literature. Darwin's Dogma. Not all religions build houses of worship and gather their members on a weekly basis.

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        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday May 08 2018, @06:38PM (5 children)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @06:38PM (#677127) Journal

          That, I would argue, is ironically poor science :D Can you see why?

          And...I'm probably gonna regret this, but *do* expand on "Darwin's Dogma" for me a bit...

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          • (Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 08 2018, @08:53PM (4 children)

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @08:53PM (#677181)

            *do* expand on "Darwin's Dogma" for me a bit...

            Oooooh, a challenge: Darwin's Dogma - all sorts of temptation to go on about misinterpreting "survival of the fittest" by leaving off important bits like "in their extant environment." I think the prime problem with any well developed religion is poor execution of the core tenets - Christians slaughtering their way to and from the holy land "in the name of God" - entirely missing Jesus' more helpful messages in the process is the easy picking in the bunch, but they all do it.

            Blind faith in peer reviewed published literature is indeed bad science, but it is not uncommon, and one of many things that draws an analogy between the traditionally recognized religions and the "religion of science" in my mind. It's one thing to point to an ideal execution of a concept, it is quite another to observe it operating in the real world.

            Sorry, I did try to come up with a scatological simile for Darwin's Dogma doo... but that felt like too much of a stretch.

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            • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 09 2018, @03:47AM (3 children)

              by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday May 09 2018, @03:47AM (#677327) Journal

              The abuse of survival of the fittest was down to Spencer, IIRC, not Darwin himself.

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              • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 09 2018, @11:54AM (2 children)

                by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday May 09 2018, @11:54AM (#677413)

                Neither do I blame Jesus for the Inquisition....

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                • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 09 2018, @01:20PM (1 child)

                  by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday May 09 2018, @01:20PM (#677423) Journal

                  You ought to, strictly speaking, since Christianity says he *is* God and is therefore eternal, time-transcendent, omniscient, and absolutely-sovereign, whereas scientists are merely human.

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                  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 09 2018, @08:17PM

                    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday May 09 2018, @08:17PM (#677595)

                    You ought to, strictly speaking, since Christianity says he *is* God and is therefore eternal, time-transcendent, omniscient, and absolutely-sovereign, whereas scientists are merely human.

                    You mistake my perspective, in my mind (whatever religion this labels me as) Jesus was just a man, a man with a particularly successful post-mortem viral marketing campaign. Like any institution that persists for centuries, Christianity has philosophized some really good things: love your fellow man, practice forgiveness, help those in need, etc. If you cherry pick the best of the messages, it's some powerfully good stuff, and I've been in a couple of churches that seem to at least try to use the best parts to "build people up." I've seen far more churches that pick and choose their messages from God apparently with the sole purpose being to grow the headcount and tithing power of their flock as big and as fast as they can.

                    Christianity, Judaism and every other omniscient/omnipotent deity religion struggles mightily with God's justice, or apparent lack thereof in people's daily lives. They tend to lose a lot of followers when the going gets tough on a personal level. The whole "born again" movement tries to repair that and find some love in God even when He seems to be kicking you in the teeth over and over... there seems to be a lot of willful blind-spotting going on to make that approach work.

                    The very same kind of willful blind-spotting I see (human, less than ideally perfect) scientists do all the time when pursuing a theory. Peer review is supposed to help tone that down, but in a lot of cases the reviewers and authors form a little group-think echo chamber that just chugs along merrily theorizing and experimenting in a narrow little sweet spot where their theories work without really examining some very obvious things nearby that could be quite important to their field.

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    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday May 08 2018, @05:34PM (5 children)

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday May 08 2018, @05:34PM (#677103) Homepage
      I would agree that there are externals who would label that worldview to be antithetical to their beliefs, and a false religion. However, I would claim those people have a perverse definition of religion. I would also assert that it is very easily distinguished from most if not all religions, as there are no externally-imposed obligations, including implicit ones such as threats of punishment, something I consider an essential ingredient of a "religion".

      So, no, I don't consider Crowley's "Do what thou wilt, that shall be the whole of the law" to be something which defines a religion.
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      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 08 2018, @08:36PM (4 children)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @08:36PM (#677173)

        threats of punishment

        Publish a scientific paper with a balanced presentation full of well supported objective truths that hurts your employer's bottom line, then tell me there's no implied threat of punishment in the system.

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        • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday May 08 2018, @09:31PM (3 children)

          by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday May 08 2018, @09:31PM (#677195) Homepage
          Within the system. That's politics, not religion.
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          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 08 2018, @10:08PM (2 children)

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @10:08PM (#677202)

            Within the system. That's politics, not religion.

            I'd call it economics - one of the primary corruptors of religion, of all kinds.

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            • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday May 09 2018, @07:32AM (1 child)

              by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday May 09 2018, @07:32AM (#677359) Homepage
              In all but the most primitive systems, economics can be subsumed into politics. In some systems, economics and politics have an enormous overlap - almost everything in Marx that isn't about economics is simply about mountainting a state that is determined in terms of economics, and therefore is about economics.
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              • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 09 2018, @11:57AM

                by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday May 09 2018, @11:57AM (#677414)

                In all but the most primitive systems, economics can be subsumed into politics.

                Really? I feel like we are transcending that state into one where economics has almost wholly subsumed politics. Ouroboros incarnate.

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