IUBio

[Neuroscience] Re: Long-term potentiation and depression

r norman via neur-sci%40net.bio.net (by r_s_norman from _comcast.net)
Fri Jun 13 08:05:35 EST 2008


On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:40:52 +1000, "Entertained by my own EIMC"
<decoy from mindyaown.biz> wrote:

>
>"r norman" <r_s_norman from _comcast.net> wrote in message 
>news:9hk3541so7j4teh5f252hmo27colba36gt from 4ax.com...
>> On Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:24:40 +1000, "Entertained by my own EIMC"
>> <decoy from mindyaown.biz> wrote:
>>
>>>"Christian Wilms" <usenet02 from out-of-phase.de> wrote in message
>>>news:1iifgvx.1y7rwd71anserqN%usenet02 from out-of-phase.de...
>>>
>>>> I think in general short-term plasticity refers to changes lasting
>>>> seconds and minutes, while long-term refers to changes lasting hours
>>>> (though 30 minutes is commonly considered to be long-enough-term for
>>>> experimental purposes ;)
>>>
>>>That a brainscientist (presumably) can be so narrow-minded as to limit his
>>>definition of LTP to "hours" is *almost* unbelievable, to me.
>>>
>>
>> What is unbelievable?  I understood "hours" to mean "hours or more".
>
>I think hours - e.g. from 2 - 24 for all I care - of LTP might be enough to 
>cause life-long changes of some excitatory and inhibitory interneurons.
>
>I understand how - but I still find it hard to take *that* - so many people 
>(especially people who purport, or whose job it is to try, to understand 
>'how we tick') don't see much beyond a narrow (too narrow) field of 
>interest. 
>

I still don't understand your problem.  Neurobiologists have no
difficulty at all understanding that memory and learning can last a
lifetime.  It is just that there is a whole array of changes caused by
experience within neurobiology, all produced by different mechanisms,
some lasting milliseconds, some lasting seconds or minutes or hours.
And some are permanent.  There do seem to be connections between
long-term potentiation and permanent memory but permanence is almost
certain to involve still other mechanisms at work than those that
ultimately fade away.



More information about the Neur-sci mailing list

Send comments to us at biosci-help [At] net.bio.net