Dendrites and Dendritic Spines, 1 of 2

There’s new studies about the role of dendrites. Think of your hand as a neuron—those special cells that have an ability to transmit information. Your palm can represent the cell body; your thumb as the axon, the largest project from a neuron; and your fingers can represent dendrites, projections from the cell. Some estimates say you can alter the shape of a dendrite in thirty seconds and can grow a new one in 30 minutes. Some types of dendrites such as the Purkinje cells in the cerebral cortex, contain additional small hair-like projections often known as dendritic spines. There are approximately 200,000 dendritic spines per cell. Increased neural activity at spines increases their size and conduction which is thought to play a role in learning and memory formation. Now, new research is expanding knowledge of the role of dendrites and their dendritic spines.

Self-talk and Physical Fatigue

Researchers at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, and other institutions reported on an experiment related to exercise fatigue and mindset (the article was published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise). On one level, these findings indicate that “motivational self-talk improves endurance performance compared to not using it,” said Samuele Marcora, the director of exercise research at the University of Kent and senior author of the study. But a deeper reading of the data, he continued, buttresses the idea that physical exhaustion develops, to a considerable degree, in your head. “If the point in time at which people stop exercising was determined solely biologically,” he said, self-talk would have no effect. But it did. However, to be effective, self-talk likely must be consistent and systematic.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/keep-repeating-this-workout-feels-good/?_r=1

Raising Your EQ

In a recent advertisement for products related to Emotional Intelligence, the Harvard Business Review included these two sentences :  "Emotional intelligence is a combination of self-management and social skills that can transform and optimize individual and team performance. Now you can learn to develop and leverage your own emotional intelligence to improve your own and your team's productivity." I like that because it makes it clear that Emotional Intelligence is more than emotions and feelings. Yes, you need to be be aware of emotions and use the information they provide to help you make sound and safe decisions but "knowing" isn't enough in and of itself. You need to build social skills and exhibit them successfully; you need to self-manage your behaviors. I often describe personal EQ as an ability to know when you feel good, when you feel bad, and how to get from bad to good in a way that gives you positive outcomes. Following that dictum has certainly helped me to avoid pitfalls such as taking things personally, jumping to conclusions, and overreacting . . .  Since the sky may be the limit for raising one's EQ, it involves an ongoing journey of skill building and implementation.

Ultracrepidarian Brains

I've never used this word, at least not in public, although there have been times when I've been sorely tempted to do so.  This adjective pertains to an individual who criticizes, judges, or gives advice outside the area of the person's expertise. I love the derivation of the word. According to several dictionaries it probably resulted from a combination of the word ultra with the Latin word crepidam, meaning the sole of a shoe or sandal. My brain finds that so humorous:  unenlightened criticism coming out of the brain and the word describing it relates to the bottom of a shoe. That's about as far away from the brain and you can get! One source suggested that ultracrepidarian might be an allusion to the words of Pliny the Elder "ne supra crepidam sutor judicare," translated as "Let the cobbler not judge above the sandal," and perhaps referred to in the English proverb “Let the cobbler stick to his last."  The next time someone criticizes or judges or gives you advice outside of his or her area of expertise, just smile and say, "Thank you for that ultracrepidarian comment."  And move on.

Nematode Brains, 2 of 2

And what are nematodes? They’re slender round worms; likely the most numerous multicellular animals on earth. Estimates are that a handful of soil will contain thousands of the microscopic worms, many of them parasites of insects, plants or animals. Nematodes have even been found at great depth (0.9–3.6 kilometers) below the surface of the earth in gold mines in South Africa.  Free-living species are abundant, including nematodes that feed on bacteria, fungi, and other nematodes, yet the vast majority of species encountered are poorly understood biologically. There are nearly 20,000 described species classified in the phylum Nemata, although the total number of nematode species has been estimated to be about 1 million. Nematodes have been described as a tube within a tube; referring to the alimentary canal which extends from the mouth on the anterior end to the anus located near the tail. Nematodes possess digestive, nervous, excretory, and reproductive systems, but lack a discrete circulatory or respiratory system. In size they range from 0.3 mm to over 8 meters in length. Some can cause diseases affecting human beings, including ascariasis, trichuriasis, and hookworm disease. And now we know they have a brain. I wonder what they "think?" Scary thought!

Nematode Brains, 1 of 2

It has a brain! The nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans! Who knew? Actually, I’d never even thought about it before but it turns out that this worm has a brain with 302 neurons connected by approximately 8000 synapses. Austrian scientists were able to identify and record the activity of this worm’s brain with high remporal and spatial resolution. Hmmm.  Who knew? Supposedly it is the only creature for which a complete nervous system has been anatomically mapped. According to neurobiologist Tina Schrodel of, the neurons in the worm’s head were so densely packed that they could not distinguish them on the first images. Visualizing the neurons required tagging them with a fluorescent protein that lights up when it binds to calcium, signaling the nerve cells’ activity. With this new kind of microscopy, they were able to record the activity of 70% of the nerve cells in a worm’s head with high spatial and temporal resolution. This new technique, based on “sculpting” the three-dimensional distribution of light in the brain, may open up the way for experiments that were not possible before. One of the questions that will be addressed is how the brain processes sensory information to “plan” specific movements and then executes them.

http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v10/n10/full/nmeth.2637.html

"I'm Busy."

"Is there really such a thing as ONE?! One what? 
For example, how can we say we are each ONE person when each one of us is made of an estimated 100 TRILLION cells that are then each made of an estimated 100 TRILLION atoms?

Inside the nucleus of each of your atoms are much much smaller protons rotating around each other at the speed of light inside which one are 10 to the 60th (a 1 with 59 zeros after it) much much much smaller packets of energy called Planck voxels (spherical Planck units) that make up the very fabric of space-time in an infinite holofractalgraphic 3D flower of life structure we call space.

So the next time someone asks you if you are busy, no matter if it is on the personal, physical, biological, chemical, cellular, atomic, sub-atomic or even at the Planck voxel level, the answer is always YES!"

The Resonance Project