
Why the Brain Seems Mostly Dormant (2015) - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/27/dark-matter/heres-why-your-brain-seems-mostly-dormant
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brad0
I’ve always wondered what happens when a neuron’s charge is decreased but
doesn’t hit spiking levels.

From the sounds of this there’s always neurotransmitters being sent, even when
there is a small change in voltage.

If a neuron with many dendrites is connected to a bunch of these non-firing
neurons then I suppose it could fire, given enough small changes from
upstream.

EDIT: link to what’s considered “quiet” neurons in the article
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
spiking_neuron](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-spiking_neuron)

I also remember reading this interesting book that suggested neurons “feed” on
the spikes. If they don’t spike for long enough they get weak and potentially
die. I’m not sure how that explains the article though.

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AndrewOMartin
Neurons will always be firing at some low level background rate, in biology I
think the focus is more on the rate of fire than on individual spikes, and as
far as I remember if that's all a neuron ever does it will indeed atrophy.

The best book on the subject for me is "How Brains Make Up Their Minds" by
Walter J. Freeman, not only is it a short book which explains the real
observed activity of neurons, but it is also backed up by an extremely strong
vein of philosophy for meaningful interpreting the observations.

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oddity
A joke of sorts I've heard before (usually in response to someone bringing up
the 10% of the brain quote) is "Did you know the human brain uses only 10% of
its vocabulary?"

~~~
goldenkey
It is the same with mathematics and most sciences. Learn 1000 things so you
know when to use 10 of them.

It is impossible to know all the uses for complex things without actually
understanding them.

It is impossible to be a general learner without a free enough latent space.

Tradeoffs are inherent in life and the universe...

