7 ms·
Ooh, I read about this in a neuroscience text book I've been nibbling at for a few months now. Really cool to see a Nobel prize for something I've just recently
by danharaj 9y ago
Ooh, I read about this in a neuroscience text book I've been nibbling at for a few months now. Really cool to see a Nobel prize for something I've just recently studied.
Isn't it cool how gene systems are hybrid digital/analog computers?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- shpx 9y agoWhich book? Would you recommend it?
- danharaj 9y agoPrinciples of Neural Science 5th ed. By Kandel et al. It was recommended to me here on HN. The thing is a serious tome. When I want to work through a chapter I have to make time every day for a week and keep notes. In any case it has a lot of technical detail which is specifically what I was looking for.
- andrepd 9y agoHmm, 1981. Neuroscience has evolved considerably over the last 35 years. Is it still worth reading it now, over more modern texts?
- forgotpwagain 9y agoMost recent edition was published in 2012. It's extensively updated between editions, so very much worth reading if you are seriously interested in neuroscience.
- andrepd 9y agoThank you, I will give it a look.
- pizza 9y agoIf you have some prior knowledge of neuroscience you can give it a cursory read in a day or so. You probably do yourself a greater favor reading it and overwriting fragments of knowledge later, than you would by not reading the whole textbook at all.
- pwm 9y agoVery cool indeed! I'm lately reading a lot about temporal system design and got fascinated with clocks and our notion of time. Interesting how, if I understand it correctly from this article, our own "clock speed" is the rate of degradation of the PEP protein. Also interesting that people who spent a long time in isolation (eg. in cave experiments) had their internal clock drift considerably from our normal 24 hour cycle, which suggests that the environment does affect it.
- dekhn 9y ago>Isn't it cool how gene systems are hybrid digital/analog >computers? I think it's more correct to say that computation is an emergent property of living systems, but is by no means the only thing they are capable of.
- xyzzy_plugh 9y agoThis is a perspective I wish was echoed in University halls.
- dnautics 9y agoI would not call gene systems computers. They may be programmable, but they do not generally do computation (that's not to say you can't force a gene systems to do very crude computation).