Word: neurone
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...that includes a substance called alpha-synuclein. No one knows exactly what alpha-synuclein does, but it’s believed to play a role in the smooth transmission of nerve signals. When the substance clumps, it can’t do the work it was designed to do, leading to neuron damage, loss of the neurotransmitter dopamine, and eventually to the familiar shakiness of such well-known Parkinson’s sufferers as Janet Reno and Muhammed...
Ruvkun and other scientists choose to work with the laboratory roundworm, a tiny bacteria-eating soil-dweller, because the sequence of its entire genome is known and its 302-neuron nervous system has been described in detail...
Douglas R. Hofstadter wrote an essay about ants as a metaphor for how the brain works. Each individual neuron, or ant, has no understanding why it does what it does. It just fires every so often, or searches for food when it is hungry. But looking at this level makes it impossible to see the complexity at the higher level. Ant colonies move, grow and make decisions unfathomable to the individual ant much as our minds have a consciousness way beyond the power or influence of any one neuron. Our society is similar; much happens at a higher level that...
...when we construct the nonbiological equivalents of human neuron clusters, we will almost certainly include built-in, quick-downloading ports. When one computer learns a skill or gains an insight, it will be able to share that wisdom immediately with billions of other machines...
They are looking at the electrical signals from one of the billions of cells in your brain. When the cell fires, you see one pattern; when it stops, you see another. Your awareness can be read from a single neuron. Now, in an even more unsettling trick, they send an electrical current to the neurons in that part of your brain and, with a push of a button, make you see one pattern or the other...