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From: snuffy@marlin.nosc.mil (David E. Smith)
Subject: Re: Nerve Net complications
Message-ID: <snuffy-241094111917@rugby.nosc.mil>
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References: <3894is$kjb@relay.tor.hookup.net>
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 1994 18:19:17 GMT
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In article <3894is$kjb@relay.tor.hookup.net>, buchanan@hookup.net (Bruce
Buchanan) wrote:

> Message-ID: <buchanan-211094152451@buchanan.tor.hookup.net>
> 
> Nerve Net complications
> 
> Readers of comp.ai.phil who do not regularly read The Economist may be
> interested in an article in the latest issue (Oct. 15/94 p.114) on Brain
> research, specifically the role of astrocytes, which concludes:
> 
> * . . . results hint at a new way of seeing the brain. Conventional
> theories of information processing in the brain are based on the observed
> electrical activity of nerve cells, punctuated by brief chemical messages
> at synapses.  This is easy to understand (at least in principle), but it
> may be only a partial answer. And the obvious analogy to man-made
> computers, which process electronic information in digital form, may be so
> incomplete as to be misleading.*
> 
> Cheers!
> -- 
> Bruce Buchanan -- buchanan@hookup.net
> **We are all in this together!!**

OK.  What does that have to do with astrocytes?  Glial cells (primarily
macroglia, consisting of oligodendrocytes and astrocytes in the central
nervous system and Schwann cells in the peripheral nervous system;
microglia are phagocytic in nature) have been known for some time to play
support roles in the nervous system.  Oligodendrocytes and Schwann cells,
for instance, form the myelin sheath for type I and II axons.  Are these
conclusions published in some scientific journal?

Dave

-- 
**************************************************************************
  David E. Smith                     * "Gentlemen, if we do not succeed, 
  email: snuffy@marlin.nosc.mil      * then we run the risk of failure."
                                     *             - D. Quayle
**************************************************************************
If Poe had used a PC:
     Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary,
     System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
     Longing for the warmth of bedsheets,
     Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets.

Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer, my
terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental.  Any
resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic.  The
question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold them is
left as an exercise for the reader.
