Quiet Down Now: How Excitatory Neurons Inhibit One Another

Quiet Down Now: How Excitatory Neurons Inhibit One Another

Draped atop the brain like a wrinkled gray blanket, the cortex is responsible for much of what we perceive, think, and do. It is a couple of square feet in area and only a few millimeters thick, but its millions of neurons form trillions of synaptic connections, making it, hands down, the most complex piece of neural real estate on the planet. Its macroscopic convolutions can only hint at the c...

Neurons die one way or another

n page 987, Yu et al. identify a novel cell death pathway that bypasses mito-chondria. The results indicate that various strategies exist to kill off neurons. A lot of the killing of sympathetic neurons occurs in the first week after birth. During that paring period, ‫ف‬ 50% of sympathetic neurons die due to a lack of nerve growth factor (NGF). Neurons deprived of NGF in vitro die through the c...

How do jurors argue with one another?

We asked jurors awaiting trial assignment to listen to a recorded synopsis of an authentic criminal trial and to make a choice among 4 verdict possibilities. Each participant juror then deliberated with another juror whose verdict choice differed, as a microcosm of a full jury’s deliberation. Analysis of the transcripts of these deliberations revealed both characteristics general to the sample ...

How to be Quiet

One job of the ellipsis theorist is to characterize the connection between the syntax of ellipsis and its semantics. And a central goal of that task is to explain where it is that ellipses are possible. The most thorough examination of what’s involved in meeting this goal is probably Lobeck (1995), where it is proposed that heads with certain properties license the ellipsis of their complements...

How can we use one fracture to locate another ?