On Thu, 17 Feb 2000, Ev wrote:
> This may seem silly and obvious but I'm confused. Since every neuron
> can have up to 10,000 dendrites but only 1 axon it seems to me that
> there is a mismatch of inputs and outputs. What am I missing? Can a
> single axon terminal sit on more than 1 dendrite?
Hi Ev,
I think your question is pretty straight forward to answer:
axons can develop branches (same as dendrites do) and thereby 'supply'
many dendrites/neurons with input.
> Also, I posed the following question to a newsgroup on evolutionary
> biology but the responses were not very convincing: what is the purpose
> of laughter and why do we have areas in the brain devoted to finding
> things comical and humorous? Can anyone help with this?
This is a more tricky one, but my impression is that 'humor' is the way of
a logical(?) brain to cope with certain inconsistencies (internal or
external) that cannot be solved otherwise. As such it (humor) could be
something that 'emerged' with increasing complexity of the brain. So maybe
humor is a sign of intelligence. I really like that thought, but there's a
lot of really stupid jokes and jokers.
Greetings, Leo
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ralph Leonhardt (Dipl.-Biol.) Tel.: +49 (0)234 322 5559
Inst. f. Neuroinformatik, Geb. ND 04/297 Fax: +49 (0)234 321 4209
Ruhr-Universitaet-Bochum
D-44780 Bochum, Germany
E-mail: ralph.leonhardt at neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de
URL: http://www.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/ini/PEOPLE/leo/top.html