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 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.

I saw a report online this AM that I thought was particularly intersting after our converation….

Lightspeed research did a survey about who we trust in making buying decisions and this is what they say…..”As the web has expanded our social graph with networks of connections and associations, we’ve responded by expanding the universe of people that we trust. The fourth most-trusted source in the Lightspeed study was “A good contact on a social network,” ranking equal to neighbors.

Bloggers ranked more highly than traditional journalists and at the same level as a store assistant.