Questions tagged [neuroscience]

The study of the structure and function of the nervous system and its components.

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Will diffusible protein aggregates coated in cell-free nucleic acids near a depolarizing neuron's soma diffuse along the axon to synapsing neurons?

Edit in response to feedback in comments requesting specific details, etc.: Will aqueously diffusible protein oligomers and protofibrils coated in cell-free nucleic acids in the aqueous interstitial ...
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How do you re-adjust gaze coordinates after bad eye tracking calibration using Matlab? [closed]

As a beginner with oculometric data pre-processing (in children from 2 to 12 years old), I would want some advice from the community! :) Using a Tobii Pro Fusion Eye tracker (250Hz), children are ...
3 votes
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Why electrical synapses are more common in invertebrates?

I suppose it's because they live in an environment where there's a constant vulnerability to predators and they need to respond quickly. But it's not really the case for many invertebrates and besides ...
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What is meant by the stabilization of a receptor?

I am reading a journal paper, and have a question about the below statement: PSD-95 is involved in the recruitment, trafficking and stabilization of N-methyl-D-aspartic acid receptors (NMDARs) and α-...
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At what point during an action potential are the sodium potassium pumps working?

I'm trying to understand how all of the potentials during an action potential are created. My question specifically is about the sodium potassium pumps, however I would also be grateful if someone ...
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What is a polar plot of relative neural firing

I am taking my PhD qualifying exams on monday, and there is a seemingly simple practice problem that I can't seem to figure out, and I was hoping someone here would have some knowledge, or at least be ...
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Could a geomagnetic storm disrupt the functioning of nerves?

It is known that geomagnetic storms can cause power grid outages. Can they also disrupt the functioning of nerves/the nervous system?
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Why doesn't treating neurons with a high sodium solution depolarize their membranes?

I am reading a journal paper, and in one of their experiments they treated organotypic hippocampal slice cultures with a high potassium solution to depolarize the neuronal membranes: We found that ...
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Do color-blind people have more rod cells in their retinae than the normally sighted?

All types of color-blindness are said to be caused by the defect or lack of cone cells in the eyes[1]. Since cone cells sense color[2] and rod cells can only sense light intensity[3], the lack of cone ...
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Does communication with new parts of body requires internal changes in brain?

I am not a biological scientist and have low biology knowledges in general, but I want to know some thing. Most of us probably can't even imagine what it feels the sixth finger to be touched. Because ...
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Caffeine tolerance

I researched about caffeine tolerance and found out that regular consumption of coffe can build caffeine tolerance even if it's 1 cup per day, within few days or a week at most. Supposedly the body ...
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1 answer
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Vision and signal through the nervous system: Is it Frequency Shift Keying?

I have questions regarding the signal between the retina and other parts of the brain. There are two types bipolar cells which are excited by light or darkness to the retina. Question: Do these form ...
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Can a neuron produce electric or magnetic effect?

According to my view,As a neuron is an electrical impulse generating cell and through this impulse it carries information from brain to whole body or vice-versa, As here a very small electricity is ...
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Can Neurons be connected in Series and will that pattern create huge voltage in human body?

We have learned in Physics that when multiple voltage sources are connected in Series , the resultant voltage becomes the summation of all voltages . Now, my question is - Can Neurons be connected in ...
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Why Poisson Process for neural firing?

I am new to the world of neuroscience and I would like to understand how come every paper in neuroscience that I read uses a Poisson process to model neural firing. Do I just have a biased sample of ...
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Is it true to say neurons like to be stimulated?

I believe I have heard people saying "Neurons like to be stimulated". Although I know stimulating the brain promotes more neurons and connections growth, but does stimulating a neuron ...
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Why does the medial hypothalamus cause affective aggression while it causes the release of serotonin?

Since aggression is inversely related to serotonin, why does activation of the medial hypothalamus, which sends axons to the serotonin-releasing PAG, cause affective aggression? Thanks in advance!
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Why does the human brain not overfit when training at some task?

One of the problems that occur during (artificial) neural network training is called overfitting. The error on the training set is driven to a very small value, but when new data is presented to the ...
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why do we use the glasses so that a different image is seen in each eye in the binocular rivalry experiment?

If we use the glasses so that in the right eye we see a house and on the left eye a face, we can see with a fMRI that the FFA is activated when seeing the face and the PPA activated when seeing the ...
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how can a patient with conduction aphasia answer questions but not repeat words?

When we have a Q&A with someone, the path in the brain goes as such: auditory cortex to Wernicke's area (to be comprehended) which then activates the Broca's area to initiate a motor reaction (so ...
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How does retinal ganglion cell receptive field affect the LGN neuron activity?

If we have a spot of light hitting the center of the ON center receptive field of a retinal ganglion cell, will the LGN neuron be activated? Will the V1 neuron be activated? I mean its receptive field ...
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What does "the scaffolding of biology" mean here?

In Zoltan Torey's The Conscious Mind, the author discusses the emerge of self-awareness: Turning to the changes that the acquisition of language instantiated, Damasio reflects on these changes in ...
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what does concentric antagonistic areas in the retina mean?

"concentric antagonistic areas seen in retinal and LGN receptive fields." (Source: Neuroscience: Exploring the brain) So the receptive field of a ganglion cell is either ON or OFF center. ...
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how many bipolar cells connected to a ganglion cell?

Is it that only one bipolar cell is connected to one ganglion cell (which (ganglion cell) is connected to only one LGN neuron cell)? I mean if more than one bipolar cell is connected to a ganglion ...
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1 answer
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Would asymmetrically positioned eyes impair vision?

Assuming one eye is 5 cm further down compared to the other, would that somehow change perception if the brain has long enough to deal with that incoming information? For example, if you were born ...
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Are parasympathetic nerves different from motor and sensory nerves?

So the nerves leaving the spinal cord are either motor or sensory (only?). But what about the cranial nerves? For example, the cranial nerve vagus is a parasympathetic nerve. Are parasympathetic ...
2 votes
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Do hair cells in the ear also vibrate at frequencies outside our hearing spectrum?

(The question has its origin because I asked myself in how far frequencies outside our perception can harm our hearing.) First of all, the energy of a mechanical wave (in this case, the sound wave, ...
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How are on and off bipolar cells of the retina arranged?

In the retina, there are both on and off bipolar cells. But how are they spread out in the retina? Are they so, that there is one of each after one another? Or are there areas where there are clusters ...
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Does the molecules in nerve cell membrane change 100% during the life of the nerve cell?

In their lifespan nerve cells do not divide and so they stay the same. They do get damaged sometimes and require some maintenance and change their axons a bit. They also require a lot of energy so ...
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Inheritance of child behavior based on daily life experiences of the parent

Our brain is a large network of neurons connected with each other.Our daily experiences change how our neurons are connected.Some experiences create better connections between two neurons A and B and ...
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What does motor writing mean in neurology?

In Zoltan Torey's The Conscious Mind, the author discusses the emerge of language: Adding weight to the thesis of the stage-wise evolution of language, Bickerton (1995) noted that the linguistic ...
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Why do V_Na and V_K stay unchanged in Hodgkin-Huxley model?

In the Hodgkin-Huxley model, ionic current $i_\mathrm{Na}$ and $i_\mathrm{K}$ are given by $$ i_\mathrm{Na}=g_\mathrm{Na}(V_\mathrm{m}-V_\mathrm{Na})\\ i_\mathrm{K}=g_\mathrm{K}(V_\mathrm{m}-V_\mathrm{...
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How to convert Kilo Units (KU) to mg? [duplicate]

Im searching for AChE (Acetylcholinesterase) and on sigma-aldrich it is showing 2 KU or 2000U/mg of protein and on MedChemExpress it is showing 50mg then how can we calcute how much will be the drug ...
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Proportion of cell layers in the different areas of human cortex

I am looking for any scientific paper or book which could help me find the different proportion of layers across the different areas of the human cortex. I am working on a research project which ...
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Relation between image on retina and the real one: looking at the two objects that are 45 degrees apart, what's the distance in the actual image?

These are what I understand about the vision. lights come through the pupil. an inverted image of the real objects is formed on the retina. which is determined by the angles. (so (a, d) and (b, c) ...
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Why is there a negative sign before voltage in the gate variable functions of the Hodgkin-Huxley model?

In Hodgkin and Huxley's articles (1952, J. Physiol.; 1990, Bulletin of Mathematical Biology), the gate variables are formulated as In particular, as $V$ increases, $\alpha_n$ decreases and $\beta_n$ ...
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Why do we like music?

Music is, of course, just a sequence of sounds. Sounds are vibrations in the air, which our ears detect. So why do we find certain sequences of sounds to be appealing? What makes us want to hear these ...
6 votes
1 answer
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Is there a quantitative report for cortical homunculus?

Almost all websites that I see for cortical homunculus only show the final picture with some qualitative descriptions such as "hands have more dexterity and occupy more motor cortex." But is ...
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What does bregma -4.36mm mean?

I am reading a journal paper. In this paper, they inject adeno-associated viruses into the brains of rats. In the below figure, there is something that I want to clarify: In Figure A, I am not sure ...
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Why is the anterior pituitary not considered part of the diencephalon?

According to the wikipedia page on the diencephalon, the posterior pituitary gland is considered part of the diencephalon, but the anterior is not. Is there a reason that these two lobes of the same ...
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What are all the possible abnormalities in our body that will result in ataxia?

So I know that ataxia is caused by loss of proprioception.I only know that dorsal column medial leminiscal pathway carries proprioceptive fibre to the cerebellum.So in theory damage to either this ...
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What phosphorylates tau protein & and what causes tau to be phosphorylated?

I want to know what phosphorylates tau protein and its 6 isoforms. I know kinases cause phosphorylation events, and in tau it can be phosphorylated in a healthy neuron in the trans conformation, but ...
2 votes
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What are the factors affecting reaction time and/or reflex velocity?

So there was this video of a cat killing a snake: Cat reaction time and another of a bobcat killing a rattlesnake Bobcat kills rattlesnake And then this from wikipedia on sand cats: In the Ténéré, a ...
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How can animals defecate or urinate in fear if the nervous system seems to opposes it?

How do animals defecate and/or urinate in fear even though their 'flight or fight' response seems to oppose it? I have seen many cats and dogs urinate and defecate when they experience extreme fear. ...
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Why does Sanjay Gupta's brain look so unusual? (brain model shown on CNN) The subdivisions don't look like the lobes I learned in school

above: Screenshot from CNN's May 18, 2023 Feinstein’s office confirms broader health complications, contradicting senator’s denial below: from anatomyinfo.com's Parts of the Brain Neurosurgeon Dr. ...
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Stroke research question - has there been research in mirroring muscle electrical signals from a good limb to the bad one?

Transcutaneous electrical neural stimulation is an established tool to help stroke victims recover use of a paralyzed limb by engaging neuroplasticity. Has anyone here heard of research where you wear ...
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How does brain activity change when focusing on something within peripheral vision, as opposed to the fovea?

Normally when looking around, we mentally focus on what we see within our fovea, as that is where we have the greatest visual acuity. However, it is still possible to focus (both physically with the ...
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What are the key mechanisms of control and transport of ATP from mitochondria to synapse in active firing neurons?

I am working with a group in the field of neuronal activity (in computational neuroscience), in specific the firing rates at different ensemble/population hierarchies. It is well established that ...
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Have elephants (or any species other than humans) been known to cover their dead?

I was just reading this blog on HarperCollins website about 5 animals that grieve. Of elephants, the following claim is made: They bury their dead and pay tribute to the bodies and to the bones. [my ...
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Is colocalisation of a protein with a presynaptic marker sufficient evidence to say that the protein is a component of axon terminals?

I am reading journal papers about the subcellular localisation of the insulin receptor (IR) in neurons. I have read a paper stating that IR is highly enriched at synapses, localising to both the ...

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