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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>Below is an intriguing bit of research, one that seems to demonstrate how the body keeps its balance, or, to put it more esoterically, how the community of<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>over 100 billion neurons in the brain and body keep from going over the edge.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Wait, that wasn’t the esoteric wording I had in mind.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In addition to demonstrating mechanisms that zero in on a golden<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>mean, mechanisms that act like catchers in the rye, this research shows a homeostatic mechanism at work.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Oh, that cellular neighbor of ours is passing to great an electrical current and threatening to grab undue influence and to skew the consensus that makes our community (the community of neurons) a survival mechanism?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Ok, girls, let’s go to work, let’s reengineer or reorient our activities a bit, and let’s put out inhibitory chemicals, tranquillizers to calm this obstrerous shouter, this electrically-hyperactive<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>cell down.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>Hmmm, now we’ve got the opposite problem: a cell among us that puts out too little electrical activity.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>We’ve got a cripple, a limper.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Let’s retool ourselves or readjust our output to manufacture some some uppers, some stimulants that will bring her up to speed.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>The community of neurons this study is peeping-tomming seems to have a norm it’s trying collectively to achieve.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>That’s a very teleological and anthropomorphic way of putting it.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But that’s one reason the German biologists of the 19<SUP>th</SUP> century showed a better understanding of the approach to a grand unified theory of everything, than did the physicists cooking up their steam-engine-based notion of thermodynamics.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Time has more than just an arrow in an embryo.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Not only is the idea that time is reversible absurd when your starting point is an embryo, but there’s a goal unfolding, one that came from a vast condensation of past experience stored in the genome, the protoplasm, and in the fabric of the cell’s walls, but one that points at a teleos, a future.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>How did the future get into the present?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Why is it lurking there?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Why does this seem a cosmos with a loose but certain goal?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>A cosmos with plans it may not know, plans it discovers as it goes<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>along, but plans and intentions, will and motivation, nonetheless?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Howard</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>Retrieved July 21, 2004, from the World Wide Web </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><A href="http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040703/note11.asp"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=2>http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040703/note11.asp</FONT></A><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-fareast-font-family: 'MS Mincho'"><FONT size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Science News Online<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Week of July 3, 2004; Vol. 166, No. 1 Neurons take charge to change messages<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Bruce Bower<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Neurons in a developing embryo respond to changes in their own electrical activity by altering the types of chemical messengers that they produce, a new study suggests. This finding counters the traditional scientific view that genes alone determine which neurotransmitters a brain cell synthesizes. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>A team led by Laura N. Borodinsky and Nicholas C. Spitzer, both of the University of California, San Diego, first measured distinctive patterns of electrical activity in each of four types of embryonic neurons in the spinal cords of frogs. The <B>researchers then changed the electrical activity in such cells in other frog embryos by genetically engineering them to pass either more or less current through their membranes.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Those alterations that led to boosts in electrical activity also led to a surge in the number of cells producing inhibitory neurotransmitters that slow down neurons . Conversely, changes that caused electrical activity to decline triggered a rise in the number of neurons generating excitatory neurotransmitters that ramp up other cells' actions.</B> The scientists report their findings in the June 3 Nature.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><B>Despite undergoing these electrical and chemical changes, all the neurons retained their distinctive structures.</B><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The study indicates that some embryonic neurons can switch the chemical signals they produce in response to changes in their own electrical activity or that of nearby cells, the investigators theorize.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It's not yet known whether shifts in electrical activity similarly influence neurotransmitter release throughout embryonic nervous systems or in adult neurons.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>If you have a comment on this article that you would like considered for publication in Science News, send it to editors@sciencenews.org. Please include your name and location.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>References:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Borodinsky, L.N. . . . and N.C. Spitzer. 2004. Activity-dependent homeostatic specification of transmitter expression in embryonic neurons. Nature 429(June 3):523-530. Abstract available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature02518.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Further Readings:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Goulding, M. 2004. A matter of balance. Nature 429(June 3):515-517.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Sources:<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Laura N. Borodinsky Neurobiology Section Division of Biological Sciences Center for Molecular Genetics University of California, San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093-0357<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Nicholas C. Spitzer Neurobiology Section Division of Biological Sciences Center for Molecular Genetics University of California, San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093-0357<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040703/note11.asp<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>From Science News, Vol. 166, No. 1, July 3, 2004, p. 13.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Copyright (c) 2004 Science Service. All rights reserved. <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.<BR>For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>