Calcium is also released randomly and without stimulation from astrocytes' internal stores in small bursts called 'puffs.' These random puffs can lead to waves. It is possible that the seemingly random thoughts during dreams and sensory deprivation experience could be calcium puffs becoming waves in our astrocytes. Basically, it is obvious that astrocytes are involved in brain processing in the cortex, but the main questions are, do our thoughts and imagination stem from astrocytes working together with neurons, or are our thoughts and imagination solely the domain of astrocytes? Maybe the role of neurons is to support astrocytes.
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Add CommentDoes this mean we need to watch (possibly increase) our calcium and potassium intake even more? Sorry if the answer is in the article, maybe someone can help clarify this for me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreat article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Scientists didnt think they did anything"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am so glad that I was born when I was, because any further back in time, scientists got away with having NO imagination whatsoever. Seems like during the 80's there was a new awakening and new willingness to accept the fact that nature is FAR beyond scientific "comfort zones".
Duh. William James was a stoner. His high was nitrous oxide, which he raved about. Freud and cocaine sound familiar? Current cures of craving behavior using ibogaine? And omigod! pot is everywhere, LSD is back, and we're two inches from wiring brains directly. Who knows the effect of 72 cps refresh rates on computers, and how stoned do they make you if you can forget you're flying a passenger airplane after 31,000 flight hours? Whee!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes this mean that the 10% of are brains we thought we were using is only 1%, maybe less.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Neuron Doctrine, is a belief very thru, and the Neuron cells forms an parabolic format of the brains, (imitating a transmitter and receiver, giving us the awareness)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe truth is, we cannot store such large memories of one’s lifetime (short and long events) and express them at well.
Encoding and decoding such, would create a larger need for storage, in spite of a total brilliant researches, facts are, when someone try’s to bring fort, a memory of the past , it appears just as if, the event is selected from a slice of the past line, not present.
And it is also, categorical for anyone selecting something from future, (there is a secret to one’s ability to do so (him or her, would have to be of a solemn Nature))
The Nature of such human, it unduly a perfectionist, a San-grail of mysteries (someone of the unscrupulous nature should keep away from it.
Mankind's "Special Gift"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisImagination is the unique ability of people to visualize things and actions within their minds that do not yet exist, or may never exist. It is the power that made it possible for humans to rise to a higher level of awareness, to create, to progress through the ages and to eventually discover the secret worlds of nature.
Without human imagination there could be no civilizations, cultures, abstract language, science or philosophy. There could be no supernatural; Gods, devils, angels, religions, myths, stories, etc. Imagination is the key to human understanding and progress, it is the only connection mankind has to the supernatural world!
The "MIND" of mankind arose from mankind's creative imagination. This powerful ability enables mankind to create new ideas and then communicate these ideas among one another and to constantly improve the original ideas. The "MIND of Mankind" has the ability to spread its ideas across time and place. It is another dimension of natures power to create, it creates things that nature by itself otherwise could not create.
It's almost funny how some people already use this article to jump to the conclusion that science is insufficient in explaining ourselves, when it is scientists who discover this information in the first and last place.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientists now think the defining moment in human history happened much earlier then they thought before. They found evidence of human creativity that dates back to between 70 to 100,000 years ago in a cave in south Africa. Much earlier then artifacts found in Europe. It was the first sign of human creativity. This little tribe had become a unique revolutionary species, the <a href="http://novan.com/mind.htm">"Homo Imaginative Sapiens"</a>. We are all descendants of this little tribe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople, including scientists, many of whom were originally people, see what they expect to see. Tell them that the basis of the brain's activity is neuronal interaction, and don't bother to mention that 90% of the brain is made up of glial cells (nobody ever told me that, and I'm supposedly an educated person--a science teacher, no less). Just as everyone once "knew" that light waves traveled through the luminiferous ether, and that objects gave up phlogiston as they burned, how many people these days could prove on their own that the earth moves around the sun, and don't just believe it because they were taught that in school? About time someone realized that 90% of the brain is probably there because it does something really important!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI came to this conclusion about 2 years ago based on a socio-political theory surround the idea of noocracy and noosphere's.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInterestingly, a political theory led me to a hypothesis about the brain that turned out correct.
I came to this conclusion when pondering on some socio-political idea's regarding noocracy I'd been toying with for a few months a couple years back.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInterestingly, a socio-political theory led me to a correct hypothesis about the human brain.
As the current issue of SciAm also reports on the prolonged effects of glia regarding pain of old injury, perhaps some of those glia in the brain explain why anti-depressant drugs moderate neuropathic pain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScientists in that era were handling large varieties of NEW information that seem old hat to us now. I think to say that they demonstrated no imagination whatsoever shows, ironically, an insufficiency of imagination on your part, w.r.t. how information is accumulated and processed. What you are saying could be said at every era, and 30 years down the line some unimaginative slob will probably be saying the same thing about scientists of THIS era.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a strong materialistic world view of NeuroScience perhaps it is reductionist although it might support how cells of differing type within the brain operate collectively as a mechanism that acts as a reciever for a none material mind which may exsist in what is now understood to originate from a universal unified field.You will have to explore this new theory and enjoy a more time consuming piece of interesting research.You Tube cover this in one of many Physics educational videos.I believe Mind Consciousness is at odds with hard empiricle material Sciences and should be equally weighted in view of a larger more comprehensive perspective.Linda from Horsham UK.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery interesting. I thought I understood the source of thought but I thought wrong. Who would of thought.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDan Solloway
Interesting ideas. I wonder how accepted Koob's ideas are to other neuroscientists. I remember glial cells being exposed as "insulating", "glue" cells that were involved in "blood transport" back in my intro-physiology days, but that's about it. Nothing on these calcium waves.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder what effect these calcium waves have on MRI studies. I'm don't entirely remember what MRI machines measured, but I think it was specific to neurons. This may be an ignorant question, but would glial cells that are active while a person is imagining be picked up on an MRI scan? And if not, what are the neurons that get picked doing?
However grisly it might seem now, Albert Einstein's brain was apparently saved after autopsy. Although the investigation was conducted with instruments from the period, the central unique feature which finally emerged as a possible explanation of his remarkable "imagination" was an unusually high ratio of glial cells in his brain's tissue. They were described, at the time, as cells which had something to do with oxygen availability in the brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's clearly time for another look.
We still seem to be harnessed to the Aristotelian notion of causality but reduced to Aristotles efficient cause that demands local linear effects. The creative process is more complex than this simplistic view which is nevertheless part of it but not the whole. There is an expressive mode that determines specific results in a direct causal way driven from the past, but there is also a regenerative mode that can simulate needs associated with an anticipated future. In the somatic nervous system that determines physical movement this regenerative mode is accommodated by the neuromuscular spindles of the proprioceptive nervous system that are distributed in parent muscles throughout the body. These muscle spindles are activated by collateral branches of motor neurons to muscles and thus monitor the position of the body in space, but they also have a parallel independent motor supply. They can be activated independently of parent muscles to generate rapid sensory feedback that simulates an anticipated action before it is enacted. The expressive and regenerative modes alternately interact to span and integrate events in space and time in this way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe point is that in the brain there is a need for independent structures like glial cells to fulfill the role of the regenerative mode. Otherwise we are condemned to be robots driven completely from the conditioned past by direct local causes. Neurons in the brain may still determine our expressive thoughts, planned behavior and explicit actions but glial cells may very well accommodate the implicit regenerative mode associated with some major aspects of imagination and dreams that may also provide a subliminal reservoir of future possibilities.
For more on how the regenerative mode works see two advanced articles on how the Human Nervous System meaningfully integrates experience at www.cosmic-mindreach.com. Part 1 deals with Spinal integration synapse by synapse. Part 2 deals with how the Cerebellum meaningfully integrates spinal and various other sensory inputs with cerebral function and motor outputs, synapse by synapse. It makes sense that Glial cells could be a complementary function to neurons in the cerebral cortex.
First - "octopi" is a terrible false-learned plural of "octopus". Like the equally terrible false-learned plural "virii" (or a dozen variants) for "virus". The "i" plural is a Latin plural for certain words ending in "us" (not all by a long chalk). "Servus" - slave, plural "servi". "Virus" is a neuter noun in Latin, meaning poison/slime/stink. It doesn't have a plural, and if it did, it wouldn't be "i". Same sort of thing with "octopus". It's from the Greek for "eight-foot" (cf Oedipus - swell-foot). The Oxford English Dictionary (the big one) explains this, and gives the plural as either "octopodes" - the archaic really learned variety, or "octopuses", the normal English-style plural (like "viruses"). "Antipodes" has the same Greek inspired plural - it's an interesting word - look it up!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSecond - I love the way this article shows us how we are fighting our way towards an understanding of important things that have been with us for a very long time - like, say, the universe. The object of study remains there for us to examine, regardless of our ideas about it. But the better we get to know it, the better we can relate ourselves to it, and even if we can't control it in any important way, we can use our knowledge to avoid injury and pain, and to increase pleasure and well-being.
Neither the universe nor the brain gives a toss if our attitude is one of worship or contempt. But they can both serve us better if we release them from the mind-forged manacles (mistaken hypotheses or superstitions) we've clapped on them.
The quote about the brain being composed of 90% glial-cells is very controversial indeed. I wish this was reflected in the article.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids=19226510&dopt=Abstract
O boy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisnow comes the truth-
and is it turnabout
Yes! "We are such stuff as dreams are made of"! Shakespeare was right. We are the ultimate "Chimps de luxe" version of higher primates - at least when it comes to daydreaming- plus being able to live our dreams - although it may prove more difficult for us in the long haul to out-live them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's interesting! Funny how these new revelations really make the old understanding obsolete and yet how dogmatic scientists and textbooks used to be and still are on how the brain works. Truly, the more we know the more we learn how much we don't know.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood article, I would like to check out the book! I am a brain cancer patient, with a stage 3, Anaplastic Oligodendroglioma and this past year has been an education on how my own brain works and what can go wrong in these cells!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo, it means we use all of our brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to have some information on a rare type of brain cancer called "Gliaoma" and what if any treatments there are for this type of cancer. If anyone can shed any light on this topic as there seems to be very little medical science can do for this at this time. I would be grateful as I have a family member with this possible diaognosis.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInterested in your comment in relation to 'gliaoma', since the symptoms are seizures with gaps in short term memory. If you can throw some light on this type of brain cancer from what you know of these cells, I would be grateful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have been studying the brain and the invisible psychological/behavioral phenotype it gives rise to for over 25 years now. There are yawning philosophical and logical paradoxes in our conceptions of brain science vs. our knowledge of psychology and experience. Glial cells are uniquely positioned to allow parsimonious solutions to these exact problems (such as the binding problem). I coined the phrase "The Missing Dark Matter of the Mind" to apply to the functions of glial cells, which I discuss at length in my book "The Textbook of the Universe: The Genetic Ascent to God" in a chapter called "The Missing Dark Matter of the Mind". Before that, I travelled around the world presenting papers developing this "dark matter" idea at various conferences around the world. We have to remember that when we look at brain matter as an outside observer, there is no reason to suppose that evolution has endowed us with the ability to see and understand the functioning of brain matter. We should expect the unexpected. For example, we see the neurons and glial cells all together in the here-and-now functioning together when the very perception o ftime we have in our experience may be created by our brains -- even the direction of causality itself. Therefore what we see may not be the whole story (as with counter-intuitive particle physics). For example, time might be a quality of neurons, not glial cells... Like dark matter (or energy) in the universe, we know it is there by its effects on the matter we DO see. It is like our eyes, we see what the eye sees out there, not the rods and cones doing the seeing. I mention these ideas just to show how little we still know about brains, and to illustrate the potential for glial cell science. This is an exciting time for brain science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is now thought that the lack of glial cells can be a contributor or cause of major depression. Anyone have any extra?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWould this be the issue with Autism? Could it be a possibility that there is a problem with the Glial cells not being able to communicate?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe premis that there is a 10:1 ratio of glia to neurons seems to no loner be the case (a 1:1 ratio is suggested). Kinda changes the dynamic of the what sets us apart from primates. Although pertaining to astrocytes, maybe there are still more and larger "astrocytes" in human and primate brains, I don't know.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCheck out the evidence:
Azevedo FA, et al. 2009
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19226510
Cheers,
Let me know what everyone else has heard/found!