
Electrical Compartmentalization in Neurons - bookofjoe
https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(19)30103-2?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2211124719301032%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
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stochastimus
Why the "compartments" (subunits) matter so much:

"The computational significance of these subunits arises from their ability to
support independent regenerative events... When triggered independently, these
local regenerative events are predicted to enable individual neurons to
function as two-layer neural networks."

That is to say, every individual neuron is in and of itself a two-layer
network. Think about that.

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phkahler
>> That is to say, every individual neuron is in and of itself a two-layer
network. Think about that.

That was the conclusion of another paper linked here a few weeks back.

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dade_
Soon we will accept that a neuron is a processor with memory, not a switch and
that synapses aren't a simple connection, but a bus. Also, that we have barely
scratched the surface on how brains and every individual cell process & store
data.

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jcims
I can’t find a good authoritative source so I’ll revert to casually
regurgitated fact(oid?)s. Each neuron contains on the order of 10^^13 atoms.
There’s a lot of potential for complexity in each of them.

The other comes from the mind-boggling (heh) connectivity between them.

If you’re a podcast listener, pick an episode you’ve heard in the last week,
scrub to a spot halfway through and start listening. Do you start getting
little flashbacks of what you were doing when you heard it the first time?

All that’s in there.

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bookofjoe
All that — and a lot more — is in "Fall; or, Dodge in Hell," Neal Stephenson's
fantastic new novel [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/books/review/fall-or-
dodg...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/books/review/fall-or-dodge-in-
hell-neal-stephenson.html)

