Posted on 06/18/2010 5:33:49 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Brain cells don't need to be in your head in order to learn something, a new study suggests. The results show brain cells living in a lab dish can be taught to keep time.
The neurons, relocated from the outer layer of a rat brain to the inside of a lab dish, could fire for specific amounts of time depending on how they were trained.
The findings shed light on a puzzle scientists are still grappling with - exactly how the brain tells time. Much of what humans do in their everyday lives relies on the brain's ability to perceive and process short intervals of time. For instance, understanding speech requires that people recognizes pauses between words and intervals between syllables.
The researchers used an electrical current to stimulate networks of cultured brain cells, similar to giving the cells an electric shock. While these networks contained tens of thousands of neurons, they make up only a small fraction of the 100 million or so neurons present in a rat brain. (The human brain contains about 100 billion neurons.)
The cells were stimulated at specific time intervals, ranging from one-twentieth of a second (50 milliseconds) to half a second (500 milliseconds).
After two hours of cell shocking, the scientists tested to see how each cell responded to just a single electrical pulse. They saw the network activity - the way the neurons fire, and whether or not this firing spreads or propagates throughout the network - differed depending on the training interval.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
This further supports the idea that timing keeping is generalized rather than centralized, he said.
The study was published June 13 in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Would somebody please send that petri dish to the gulf coast and put it in charge of the oil cleanup! Surely a dish full of counting cells can do a better job that Obama is doing!
I’m still waiting for research on why the liberal brain cannot process information logically. Why can’t it comprehend simple things like supply and demand, incentives and disincentives? Of course, the present administration would never fund such research.
Buy Reynolds?
Now I am sure this is how my parrot knows what time to go to bed. Here in Alaska, it’s daylight long past 9 pm, and in the winter, it’s dark at 4 or so. But it never fails. 8 pm in the winter, 9 in the summer. “Time for night? Ready for night? Time for Buster’s night?” Without fail. Every night. Right on time. I have speculated to myself for some that a “metronome” in his brain must be keeping the time for him. :o)
Maybe he is just experiencing fatigue? After 16 hours of being awake, I know I will just fall asleep.
Our dog will relocate himself to the bedroom at about 9:30 every night, regardless of the season. He watches us hopefully if we stay up longer than usual. It isn’t because he is tired, though, as he is 10 and spends his day napping.
Buster naps throughout the day, but he is still a young (as parrots go) bird, I think they do it in the wild when they are digesting their food. Since his breed originated in the Congo, which is equatorial, he is "set" for a 12-hour day/night cycle, which I try to provide for him.
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