Guess what The Brain and Behavior Blogger is having for dinner tonight. CROW!!!!
As he is wont to do, The B&B Blogger pulled somebody’s chain – and that somebody (this time, eminent neuroscience researcher, Gyorgy Buzsaki) pulled The Blogger’s chain back. Here’s how it went down…
The B&B Blogger hyped a research project conducted by GB. But, thinking that he caught a slight overstatement, joked that GB “got a bit full of himself” by claiming that the study was the first example of a well-defined pattern of activity in the brain that had been reliably and selectively eliminated. Oh contrarimondo, the B&BB pontificated. Todd Sacktor was the first to do that!
Here’s the reverse-chain-pull by GB: “The statement is absolutely true. Nobody has ever selectively eliminated a well-defined brain pattern before. A brain pattern means that a constellation of neurons fire together and give rise a mesoscopic activity that can be recorded as a ‘mean field”. Todd Sacktor’s findings with PKCzeta are fantastic but he did [not] eliminate a brain pattern. The enzyme may be activated by sharp wave-ripples or other patterns and the drug his group used to interfere with plasticity is downstream from population neuronal patterns. Thus, it is not not known that the blocker would affect ripples but even if it does, I would be surprised if the effect would be selective to this particular brain pattern. Hope you can see the difference between electrical patterns and molecular events.”
Well, Dr. Buzsaki, thanks for your comment. I’m sure that you are correct and I apologize for the mistake at this end. More nobly still, I concede the point fully – even though I’m kind’ve weak on the electrical patterns vs. molecular events distinction as it applies here. I used to “see” things like this. But, that was before I stopped smoking those funny cigarettes.
Keep up the great research!
