IUBio

The mitochondrion as a flip-flop memory element in neurons

Andrew Gyles syzygium at alphalink.com.au
Fri Dec 22 23:26:52 EST 2000


In article <1em22oz.1ck5cit1l7pviaN%harry at dherwin.org>,
  harry at dherwin.org (Harry Erwin, Ph. D.) wrote:
> Theophilus Samuels <theophilus.samuels at btinternet.com> wrote:
>
> > Elaborate please.
>
> What about Simmons's evidence for 10-100 nanosecond resolution of
range
> in bat biosonar? The neurons involved are comparable to typical
> mammalian neurons in their recovery times and rates of spiking. That's
> pretty good evidence that the key cue is the exact timing of the
action
> potentials involved, not their presence or absence.
>
> What about Levy's work on variable timing of action potential
generation
> in the hippocampus? During replay, the neurons spike much more quickly
> than they did during the initial exposure to the stimuli.
>

> --
> Harry Erwin, PhD, <mailto:harry at dherwin.org>,
> Senior Lecturer in Computing at the University of Sunderland,
> Computational Neuroscientist (modeling bat behavior) and
> Senior SW Analyst and Security Engineer.
>

I am not a specialist and I do not dispute what you say here. Indeed I
find attractive the idea that information is encoded in the exact
timing of the spikes. Is there any information yet on what 'reads' the
time intervals between spikes and 'decodes' them to give back the
original information to the receiving neuron (or neurons)? At the least
a 'stopwatch' would be needed, would it not?

Andrew Gyles


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