hmmm.

Gmail's little "webclips" thingy threw up a link to a blog called Rewiring Neuroscience in which someone who may or may not be a crackpot proposes that all our theories of neural signalling are just plain wrong. Parts of it are more convincing than others. For instance, there certainly could be chains of linked sodium channels as suggested, we are mostly ignorant of the details of neuron membrane structure at that level, and I could believe an information-theoretic argument that the bandwidth of (say) the optic nerve is inadequate to its job without some such mechanism. However, if such is the case, it is not clear to me why neurons would bother with the voltage-gating mechanism (why not just have long actin or collagen fibers up and down the axon that get yanked?), and I totally don't buy the argument from "there's only time for one spike to propagate through the bat's brain" 'cos it seems to assume that the bat has no state in its head before that one spike comes along, which is just ridiculous. Also, he seems to utterly neglect myelin, and the stuff about holographic representations and the retina wanders off into weird speculation land.

Still, interesting enough that I don't mind saying hey, check this out, neurosci-minded folks.

attn queenpam

Did your uncle put spices in that turkey before he fried it?