IUBio

A Theory of Neuropeptides?

k p Collins kpaulc at [----------]earthlink.net
Fri Jan 9 05:05:20 EST 2004


Hi Dag,

"Dag Stenberg" <dag.stenberg at nospam.helsinki.fi.invalid> wrote in message
news:btlq1k$pas$1 at oravannahka.helsinki.fi...
> k p  Collins <kpaulc@[----------]earthlink.net> wrote:
> > Hi Dag,
> > ...
> > As I've discussed in the past, it's my position that a lot of this sort
> > of thing does happen during sleep - with respect to "experiential total"
> > cross-correlation, which is absolutely-necessary with respect to
> > maintaining 'normal', unified waking-consciousness - simply be-
> > cause, during waking-consciousness, one's neural activation is
> > necessarily [more or less] specifically-correlated to one's then-
> > occurring experience, but cross-experiential-total cross-correlation
> > of each 'day's new experience is =absolutely-necessary= if a
> > unified consciousness is, in fact, to be maintained.
>
> I used to think that my text was difficult to understand (although I
> like to think that I make sense), but I see now, Ken, that your writing is
a
> whole lot more complicated.

:-]

It's because I'm usually just 'thinking out loud' - the fact that I've
little interactive feedback shows in the way that my 'language'
tends toward being 'personal'.

That, and I was discussing =a lot= - big dynamics, having globally-
integrated functionality in them, that's still 'unfamiliar' to most folks.

Thank You, all the more, for dealing with it, Dag.

>
> > As you can imagine, because I've been at this for so long, I've become
> > aware that there are several 'sub-processes' within
sleeping-consciousness.
> > They are recognizable because they go in and out of sync,
stereotypically,
> > as I allow my sleep cycle to rotate 'around the clock'.
>
> There is much published literature about free-running rhythms and the
> desynchronization of internal rhythms. It is, as you mention,
> complicated to sort out the various rhythms forom each other. To couple
that
> to chemistry, though, is NOT easy.

I Agree. See my two posts discussing sleep-correlates to 'schizophrenia',
and you'll see how complete my Agreement is.

>
> > So I can say, with Certainty, that if you find a subject who will endure
> > an analogous waking-sleeping discipline, you'll see periodic
fluctuations
> > that correlate to these sleep sub-processes - and because they sort of
> > 'slide-over' one another [they each 'go their own way'], the
correlations
> > will be 'easy' to identify in pharmocological assays. [Whoops! I =don't=
> > know if such studies can be done in Humans - probably not, eh? Or do
> > the substances you monitor occur, say, in bodily fluids?
>
> The discussion was about synaptically active neuropeptides. There is no
> sense in measuring them other than in the immediate vicinity of the
> synapses involved in each function. There is no sense in measuring them
> even in the cerebrospinal fluid. Consequently, present technique does not
> allow very much of intracerebral measurement in humans. Yes, some
> invasive measurements can be done, monoamines (e.g. Ronne-Engstrom et
> al., J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 1992 Sep;12(5):873-6, Broderick et al.,
> Brain Res. 2000 Sep 29;878(1-2):48-63) and metabolites (e.g.
> Reinstrup et al., Neurosurgery. 2000 Sep;47(3):701-9, Nordstrom et al.,
> Anesthesiology 2003 Apr;98(4):809-14) or noninvasive measurements of
metabolites
> (Urrila et al., J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 2003 Aug;23(8):942-8).
Obviously,
> invasive procedures are ethically acceptable only in certain patients
(whose
> diagnosis or treatment may benefit from the measurement).
>
> The invasive techniques used in the studies I cited above involve either
> intracerebral microdialysis (artificial capillary) or microvoltammetry,
> and the noninvasive technique is proton spectroscopy. Microdialysis
> could lend itself to the measurement of small neuropeptides that pass
> the membrane of the probe, but no big ones. Still, the actual measurement
> would be exceedingly tricky because of the extremely small concentrations
> occurring. For these reasons, animal studies will yield much more
> relevant results, although conducting such experiments is in no way
> trivial.
>
> To conclude, I agree that the question of depletion and replenishement
> of neuropeptides across the sleep-wake cycle is interesting. To crudely
> outline an experiment might be straightforward. To make it work in order
> to produce relevant biological data (I mean relevant, actual, factual
> data, not a hyopthesis) is extremely difficult, even for specialists
involved
> in such work during decades. Otherwise this would already have been done.
>
> Dag Stenberg

I Agree.

I see the analogous thing [the difficulty] through the 'lens' of what's
called
"functional multiplexing" in NDT. It's the way I'm trying to contribute to
the body of understanding. [And I'm much in need of more reading, but
I'm not ready to read-again, just yet. I'm always discussing the general
stuff
that my experience has led me to see as being important.]

Thank You for "putting up with me", Dag. [=Sincere=]

I'm really 'undeserving' of it because, I'm 'too full of myself', and am,
pretty
much, just 'throwing myself against the walls' these 'days' - trying to
break-
through what I perceive to be a 'logjam'.

Your extremely-informative, discussion enables me to see that
I often go 'too-far'.

So, Thank You.

Cheers, Dag,

ken [k. p. collins]





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