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Neurons Can Be Changed From One Type To Another, Communication Paths Rewired (harvard.edu)
schwit1 writes: A newly published study from Harvard biologists [here's a link to the paywalled paper's summary] shows how neurons can be dramatically changed from one type into another from within the brain and how neighboring neurons recognize the reprogrammed cells as different and adapt by changing how they communicate with them. Building on earlier work in which they disproved neurobiology dogma by "reprogramming" neurons — turning one form of neuron into another — in the brains of living animals, Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers have now shown that the networks of communication among reprogrammed neurons and their neighbors can also be changed, or "rewired."
"Well, sure," said a brainwashing industry spokesman.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Let me be the first to say "uh oh", not because I think it's a bad thing (I don't, I think it's an amazing discovery) but because right now some fuckface ad exec is rubbing his sweaty little hands together wondering how he can implement this to sell more fucking widgets.
And his counterparts in the government are doing the same thing, albeit with different aims in mind.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
This is the beginning of the cure for severe autism, the symptoms of a extensive brain damage and such, and of course a step towards useful machine-brain interfaces.
I'm looking forward to when I can hire people to reverse-engineer hardware and/or software from enemy companies, and then have them build me superior replicas, with detailed, but different schematics, and then I can just delete their memories afterwards.
What could possibly go wrong?
Also, I wish people would stop talking about this thing in France. Real people in the USA are suffering every day, and nobody does anything about their plight. African-Americans are harassed by cops all the time when they commit crimes (which is why we say "fuck da po-lice"), we can't use our EBT cards to buy KFC or malt liquor, we get high paying jobs because of affirmative action, and we haven't received a payout from the government as a result of all of us suffering from the slavery we experienced a couple centuries ago. Black people are psychologically traumatized as a result of having been slaves. We deserve to either get money, or we should be allowed to take over this country, and turn it into a progressive nation, like Haiti or South Africa.
#blacklivesmatter
The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are big. We can dump all the dead white people in those things.
Roger Penrose conjectures that the human soul, the secret sauce that would prevent any AI from becoming fully human, resides in a quantum connection with the microtubules in neurons. How would the neuronal plasticity envisioned here impact that?
The deniers were undeterred and everybody benefits.
See subject: I've said it before here on /. - & if you "workout" your brain, just like the body, it gets stronger... Academia for myself personally was the BIGGEST PROOF of it for me (once I found something I really loved in computing, seeing it changing the world, MOSTLY for the better & as a 1st string NCAA Lettering Athlete in the sport of Lacrosse for a national champ... I did the MOST changing for the better in that timeframe imo).
* :)
(Conversely, however - IF you abuse it, you destroy it too...)
APK
P.S.=> Unfortunately, in my time, I've run into heroin addicts (most destroy themselves or die) - many the past 2-3 yrs. mostly in the line of business I'm in mainly (consulting or contracting in computing on the side) - 1 is in recovery & doing fine for 5++ yrs. & he told me of how it "reprograms the brain" (This makes sense in the 'bad way' from above & as far as how it changes them mentally - it's ALL THEY LIVE FOR when they're still 'hooked on smack') but not in a good way - they forget about having goals & dreams to shoot for (not needle shooting either) - it's sad (they were once someone's little boy or girl, you know?)
... apk
For decades and decades the consensus was that neurons don't change. The overwhelming MAJORITY of researchers believed that to be true. If it had mattered, government policies would have been aligned with that overwhelmingly supported belief. Because that's what all the science and scientists said was the truth.
But it wasn't ...
Funny thing about 'dogma', nobody realises it's dogma while it's happening.
We the lay public, see this announcement as science progressing. Three decades ago, well we would not even have been treated to the idea. So what ideas are being suppressed now?
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.