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> The person cited in the post is also a crackpot My first reaction was to downvote your comment for the ad hominem, which doesn't contribute to the discussion
by wombatmobile 6y ago
> The person cited in the post is also a crackpot
My first reaction was to downvote your comment for the ad hominem, which doesn't contribute to the discussion. But I can see you are giving consideration to the article, and want to discuss it further - it's just that you haven't got enough out of it to make much of a start, and so this is your conversation starter.
I'm assuming you've labelled this a "fringe theory" by a "crackpot" not to be nasty, buy in order to start a conversation.
Let's start with your statement:
> I don't think there's any real doubt that memory is stored in neurons
The question is "how?". The article is postulating that each neuron is a computer, and RNA is a storage medium.
You say "my first objection would be that RNA would be far too slow for this purpose." That's because your thinking about
RNA is limited to what you understand about RNA. You've learned about mRNA, which is one application that uses this molecular format, but it's not the only possible application.
The article suggests that the data transmission protocol which leads to thought and/or behaviour could be electrical, through simultaneous aggregated neuronal RNA based data processing.
Read the section he quotes from Ron Maimon, subtitled RNA ticker tape. What do you make of this statement?
"The RNA in a cell is the only entity which is active and carries significant bit density."
- fabian2k 6y agoThere are a lot of claims without any evidence in that blog post. "The RNA in a cell is the only entity which is active and carries significant bit density." is one of them. DNA certainly encodes for a significant amount of information as well. And why not proteins, there are a lot of proteins in a cell and you can also modify them in various ways. A cell has an enormous amount of state, any of it could theoretically store information like memory. There are a lot of different molecules active in a cell, in various modification states, at various locations, and all of that could encode information. What this blog posts doesn't provide is any experimental evidence, this is a pure thought experiment. If RNA were to actually store memory, that would be great. Because determining the RNA sequences inside a cell is something we can do.
- wombatmobile 6y ago> DNA certainly encodes for a significant amount of information as well. And why not proteins True! > What this blog posts doesn't provide is any experimental evidence, this is a pure thought experiment. Yeah, so?
- eternalban 6y agoHe wrote "active and [has encoded information]". mRNA and tRNA move, so "active". Ribosome is also (re)active, and "the ribosome is itself composed of both RNA and protein, likely reflecting its own descent from an RNA world." [1] [1]: The Ribosome Moves: RNA Mechanics and Translocation https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6581036/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6581036/
- jusssi 6y agoI was going to say, that the DNA in all the brain cells is identical and unchanging, so it cannot possibly record memories. But I decided to google first, and found this: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/dneu.22626 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/dneu.22626 It appears that the brain cells in particular actually do develop significant changes to their DNA.
- Chris2048 6y ago> My first reaction was to downvote your comment for the ad hominem Why? Ad-homs aren't necessarily bad, it's contextual.
- wombatmobile 6y agoIt’s lazy and uninformative to call someone a crackpot. More informative to state the views you disagree with and say why.
- Chris2048 6y agoIt's entitled to demand someone provide that, or be "lazy". Inform yourself - checkout said users post on stack exchange.