kkollins at pop3.concentric.net wrote:
[...]
> A big factor in neuralglia dynamics is K+, upon which all action potentials
> depend... steer K+ concentration, and capacity for action potential
> manifestation is also steered... imagine a flexible "bladder" that's
> studded with "nozzles"... distort the "bladder" and the "nozzles" become
> spatially-displaced... if the "nozzles" distribute K+, then the spatial
> displacement of the "nozzles" will action-potential dynamics... this'll
> tune "memory" accordingly. This's exactly what the verified neuralglia
> contractile properties do in vivo. ken collins
Some notes:
The nerualglia functionality hypothesis of AoK, which focusses mainly on
astrocyte dynamics, is =not= meant to completely account for all of "memory".
Beyond the need that's filled by this hypothesis, which I've already briefly
discussed (the need for a robust reorganizing capacity... one that underpins
"inversion" (AoK, Ap4, Ap8), which is well-suited to observations that
neuralglia reproduce... "neuralglia" means "nerve-glue"... the neuralglia form
a 3-D substrate in which the neural topology is embedded... thus, if the
physical structure of this "nerve-glue" is altered, the neural topology can
"ride" that change, and this can constitute a mechanism of the terriffic
plasticity that underpins "behavioral inversion"... I view these proposed
neuralglia dynamics as being somewhat like the way that objects become
reoriented when one shakes a box filled with sand in which the objects are
embedded... only, in the case of the neuralglia, it's the neural topology that
gets "rearranged", of course within tolerances governed via global TD
E/I-minimization dynamics... if the Swede-Salk study holds up, I'll have to
revisit this neuralglia hypothesis, and enhance it to include the ramifications
of the newly-participating neurons... no problem, it'll just become
more-robust).
Another thing that's included in AoK's neuralglia hypothesis addresses the
easily-observed dynamics of widely-ranging "memory"-retrieval dynamics... you
know, the way one's recall is tunable with respect to widely-differing
information... huge such shifts, in which one might transition between whole
differing bodies of knowledge, always occur over finite time courses... the
shifts include an observable "ramping-up" to optimal performance... early in
the shift, stuff that will later be readily recalled, might not be recallable
at all... and as the shift occurs, stuff that was readily-recalled "slips" out
of immediate retrievability. While considering these readily-observed dynamics,
and holding them in juxtaposition to the dynamics of "inversion", it became
increasingly-clear that an explanation that relied upon neural trophic dynamics
was inadequate because, one can shift back and forth as many times as one
wishes to do so... not only is nothing lost from memory during such shifts of
focus (which would be the case if the trophic modifications were destroyed and
reconstructed (msg for more if you want it), but the dynamics inherent in the
shifts are =always= accompanied by enhanced, more-robust information stores...
during the shifts, the stuff of the former focus gets cross-correlated with the
stuff of the shifted-to "state"... repeated cycling only increases the strength
of this cross-correlation... this is exactly what would happen if these massive
memory-focus shifts occur as a function of the stuff of the neuralglia
hypothesis... these massive shifts simply cannot be accounted for via an
exclusively neural-trophy view because information would get lost in the
shuffle if the neural structure was always being torn-down and reconstructed
anew... yet, these great memory-focus shifts do occur, the time courses of
their ramping-up can go on for hours, or days, or weeks, or months, or
years... yet, when one shifts back to the former focus, typically, via a
somewhat-shorter version of the same time course, not only is everything
"still-there", everything's still-there more-robustly... the
cross-fertilization has happened... If you cannot see why this requires other
than neural trophic dynamics, please msg me and I'll go further into it. ken
collins