Wiring : An Interlude

The answers are coming.

-Morpheus to Neo, The Matrix.

On Biological Evolution

Neo-darwinism is a thing of beauty. These days it hardly happens that one does not suspect it to be behind a given biological phenomenon. But it mostly comes as an after-thought. I wonder if it has any predictive use at all.

Wiring 1

Was feeling a little under the weather. I hope a dengue bearing mosquito is not to blame. Damn! I could feel I was not at my analytical best. But it was a neuro lecture, so a hightened sense of understanding was my default state. Could have been much better.

So the questions...

The lecture moved on. I was getting kind of desperate as it seemed the answers weren't on the menu. The lecture began with a recap session which seemed unusually long. Then the flow of the discussion kept getting led astray mostly due to certain over-enthusiatic individuals who seemed to get ahead of themselves. A pack I think I once certainly belonged to and one which I think I am transiting. Let the prof talk, you might lose out on some vital insight in your attempt to push/validate your ideas amidst the discourse. This is some sort of a policy that I have (unknowingly?) adopted these days. Wait and watch and pounce when you just have to, an almost compulsive act.

All in all kind of less than my expectations (greed?). But...

At the end along came an idea. A classification of memories was touched upon slightly. Motor memory and declarative memory. My face might have lit up. Yeah, just when I was gonna conclude a wasted lecture. "Functional memories". I felt reassured. I have not been reading useless stuff after all; amidst short naps on the D-block library couch.

I am glad I saw a thread. At the end of the lecture. So be it. Have been promised a talk on the developmental problem of the sense of smell in the next lecture by a seasoned and a highly motivated student. Also have been urged to do some home-work on how the smell problem was such a special problem before it was cracked by a certain Linda Buck. Will fit in the home-work thing tomm since kinda jobless these few days. At least until 21st when I get my time on the NMR machine again...

The sense-of-smell talk is going to be interesting in every way.

Reality Check

After attending a neuro causerie.
I wonder whether when I myself master the jargon and fluorescent imagery my past scriblings will seem even to me as nothing more than idle doodling. (Not that they don't at all seem so now :P)

The Wait

In the coming couple of weeks my neurobiology course will conclude. It will end with how-the-brain-gets-wired themed lectures. I guess two of these plus a lecture focused on a special kind of wiring - the wiring of the optical pathway. Nothing less than a feast.

Following are the typical questions whose answers I will be fishing for in these lectures.

• The basis of instincts. Especially the behavior of just born calves. Where does this information come from?
• Nature of data structures. Is the location and form of a given memory identical (or at least similar) in two different humans? For e.g. say the neuronal data structure corresponding to a given memory - say the English numeral 1 (i.e. basically a shape).
  
• Imagination. Imagination is a brain activity unlike other brain activities such that you have neuronal activity in absence of an external input. How does one imagine?
  
• Perception. Making an image of the world around you is a biological challenge in itself. A 100% biological lens followed by a bunch of 100% biological cables and ultimately a 100% biological "processing center". Marvelous. Still, beyond that how does an individual perceive an object. For e.g. when I see a square I feel a square. I wonder if some kind of reflection phenomenon - reflection of neural impulse encoded information within the brain would be necessary for perception. Say back and forth between the two cerebral hemispheres. This question is perhaps intricately related to the puzzle of imagination stated before.

Yeah, pretty much it. I hope to get at least a start towards solving these puzzles from these lectures. A reasonable expectation I suppose.

BioSphere

Biology is like a sphere. Every worker thinks the field he is researching is central to biology.

On Biological Evolution

Following two general ideas about biological evolution are the result of an informal discussion with a fellow colleague.

• The period just before advent of cell membranes is what I shall refer to as the late primordial soup times. Assuming that during this period organic compounds which would be sources of carbon skeleton and free energy would be available in plenty and hence would not be a limiting factor for the survival of contemporary biologicals; it would be a free lunch. One would therefore expect the evolutionary pressures to be relaxed. However, after membranes were invented these diffuse biologicals would get a sense of individuality. Evolution would now have a well defined target for it to act upon.
• When faced with a challenge only those cells who have invented a biochemical pathway to solve it will survive. But it probably was when the cell found a way to document this information in the form of genetic information that evolution got a firm substrate to work upon. With it also came the concept of "next generation of cells" who would re-use their ancestral biochemical logic than re-invent it. But the beauty is that the system still allowed for new experiments, in essence allowing the ancestral logic to be overriden.
  

The events following post-genetic material times probably are just biology trying to solve its own engineering problems.