On Mon, 24 Sep 2001 11:52:35 +1000, "Andrew Gyles"
<syzygium at alphalink.com.au> wrote:
>In December 2000 there was some discussion in this newsgroup of my
>hypothesis that mitochondria might act as flip-flop memory elements in
>neurons.
>>One counter-argument ran as follows: "Why should neurons need a flip-flop
>memory element? There's no evidence they're digital".
>>Well, perhaps there is some evidence now. In the 21 December 2000 issue of
>"Science" Dong-Sheng Wei et al report binary behaviour of some terminal
>apical dendrites of pyramidal neurons, which they characterised as
>"all-or-none responses that were subthreshold for somatic action
>potentials".
>>They remarked that "Compartmentalized and binary behavior of
>parallel-connected terminal dendrites can greatly expand the computational
>power of a single neuron".
>>Of course I am aware that the paper in "Science" does not support my
>hypothesis about a possible role of mitochondria, which is speculative.
>However, it does (in my inexpert opinion) show that the behaviour of some
>dendrites is "digital".
>>Andrew Gyles
>The correct citation is DS Wei et al., Science
293(5538):2272-2275(2001)
in the Sept. 21, 2001 issue.
