Posted by SLS on January 17, 2009, at 22:29:33
In reply to Re: What % of personality is just neurotransmitters, posted by Neal on January 14, 2009, at 21:44:12
> OK, SLS, I'll play your game. How about memory?
You're fun.
I believe that the brain is a Gestault, and cannot be understood by looking at its fundamental building blocks. I agree with DesolutionRower 100%. This is why I constantly lobby for a change in the name of this board from "Neurotransmitters" to "Neuroscience".
Circuitry. Memory doesn't work unless new connections are made and old ones broken. (It's good to forget certain things). Electrical activity, gene activity and expression, membrane protein alignments, second messenger cascades, ion transport, hormones, negative feedback loops, positive feedback loops, signal amplification and muting, variable signal-to-noise ratios, neurite growth, neural pruning, and - yes - neurotransmitters and synaptic receptor functions. I left out a bunch of stuff for which I am profoundly apologetic. The brain is incredibly complex and indescribably elegant. The Guy that invented it did a hell of a job. Why this same Guy allowed for the occurrence of brain illness in his design - only God knows. I'll let the philosophers and theologians worry about that one.
Personally, I think the shrinking of the size of the hippocampus - the primary structure involved in memory - is due to atrophy from non-use (cerebral activity that would call for its use is globally reduced in severe depression - P.E.T. scans show this) rather than being an etiological pathology for affective illness.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:847393
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/neuro/20080706/msgs/874626.html