With regards to the "fake" tag, let's reference the originating article, shall we: http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080129/full/news.2008.538.html
Deep brain stimulation has actually been used since 1993 in patients with Parkinson's disease to stop tremors and allow them to use their muscles again. The next step taken was in psychiatric disorders; there was a case where they helped stop the obsessive thoughts in an OCD patient, and there was work being done looking at the effects of stimulating certain areas of the brain of people with clinical depression. Most of that is in a related Nature article you need a subscription to read, from July of 2005. It's linked in the article I linked to, if you have access to a subscription to Nature.
So this sort of "deep brain stimulation" has been going on for a long time. The novelty here is that they're looking at the effects of stimulating different areas to target different brain functions. In the article regarding memory, they accidentally stimulated the fornix, which is a fiber bundle that leads to the hippocampus, and has been closely linked with memory since the case of HM back in the 1950s, who had surgery to remove the hippocampus in order to relieve his epilepsy. The seizures, which had been originating in the hippocampus, stopped, but he lost the ability to form new memories, much like the guy in Memento. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_(patient)
Deep brain stimulation has even been used to treat epilepsy, because the regularity of the stimulation helps to calm the erratic firing characteristic of a seizure. The point is, the idea of stimulating selected areas of the brain to get a desired effect isn't new. Neither is the idea that a small area of the brain is involved in formation and recall of memories. The interesting thing here is that stimulating that area can lead to recall. However, there's still a long way to go before we can say it's a "cure" for Alzheimers, if that's even possible.
In other words, the religious people want to be able to have complete control over other people's beliefs. So what else is new. Sounds like a personal problem.
First of all, the mGlu receptor doesn't cause strengthening to stop. Just the opposite, in fact; it is required for the continued strengthening of the synapses. However, I can see how the wording of the article makes it easy to get confused on this point.
I believe the "duh" refers more to the title and the implications: practice makes perfect. Basically the science done is showing a molecular basis for why practice does in fact "make perfect" (though I agree it's perfect practice that makes perfect), because repetition leads to solidifying of the connections involved. The science is new, but the implications are not.
Biological studies have shown that when an animal follows a maze many times during the day, neurons in the hippocampus fire in a certain pattern. That night while the animal sleeps, the neurons fire in the same pattern. Are they "rehearsing" the maze?
There have been other studies linking dreaming to memory. When people are deprived of REM sleep, their memory works less well. This is probably at least partly due to being tired or less alert, but there is a component that is stronger for things they were exposed to on the previous day. One of the primary theories in dream research (from a neurobiological viewpoint at least) is that dreams work to solidify memories. During the day, information (about events that happen to you or just things you hear) is stored in one area of the brain (probably the hippocampus, short-term memory, which is different from working memory which is more of a phenomenon of reverberation in the prefrontal cortex). While you sleep, the brain replays the information so that it can be more permanently stored in long-term memory (probably the entorhinal cortex). We know at least some of this through studies of people with damage to the hippocampus or the entorhinal cortex, along with the sleep studies mentioned above and lots of animal studies.
The dreams themselves are probably just your brain trying to make sense of a series of random information that is being replayed. The actual important thing is likely to be the stream of imformation, which is probably not as coherent as even the most wild dreams. My dreams tend to jump all over the place, people turning into other people, myself teleporting to all sorts of random places.
We also know that memories can be altered any time they are replayed. This does suggest that a dream could help you practice for a given scenario, since when you're in the scenario itself you would probably act the way you remember from the dream. However, it's unlikely that this was the actual purpose of the dream.
Slashdot Mirror
With regards to the "fake" tag, let's reference the originating article, shall we: http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080129/full/news.2008.538.html Deep brain stimulation has actually been used since 1993 in patients with Parkinson's disease to stop tremors and allow them to use their muscles again. The next step taken was in psychiatric disorders; there was a case where they helped stop the obsessive thoughts in an OCD patient, and there was work being done looking at the effects of stimulating certain areas of the brain of people with clinical depression. Most of that is in a related Nature article you need a subscription to read, from July of 2005. It's linked in the article I linked to, if you have access to a subscription to Nature. So this sort of "deep brain stimulation" has been going on for a long time. The novelty here is that they're looking at the effects of stimulating different areas to target different brain functions. In the article regarding memory, they accidentally stimulated the fornix, which is a fiber bundle that leads to the hippocampus, and has been closely linked with memory since the case of HM back in the 1950s, who had surgery to remove the hippocampus in order to relieve his epilepsy. The seizures, which had been originating in the hippocampus, stopped, but he lost the ability to form new memories, much like the guy in Memento. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_(patient) Deep brain stimulation has even been used to treat epilepsy, because the regularity of the stimulation helps to calm the erratic firing characteristic of a seizure. The point is, the idea of stimulating selected areas of the brain to get a desired effect isn't new. Neither is the idea that a small area of the brain is involved in formation and recall of memories. The interesting thing here is that stimulating that area can lead to recall. However, there's still a long way to go before we can say it's a "cure" for Alzheimers, if that's even possible.
In other words, the religious people want to be able to have complete control over other people's beliefs. So what else is new. Sounds like a personal problem.
I believe the "duh" refers more to the title and the implications: practice makes perfect. Basically the science done is showing a molecular basis for why practice does in fact "make perfect" (though I agree it's perfect practice that makes perfect), because repetition leads to solidifying of the connections involved. The science is new, but the implications are not.
There have been other studies linking dreaming to memory. When people are deprived of REM sleep, their memory works less well. This is probably at least partly due to being tired or less alert, but there is a component that is stronger for things they were exposed to on the previous day. One of the primary theories in dream research (from a neurobiological viewpoint at least) is that dreams work to solidify memories. During the day, information (about events that happen to you or just things you hear) is stored in one area of the brain (probably the hippocampus, short-term memory, which is different from working memory which is more of a phenomenon of reverberation in the prefrontal cortex). While you sleep, the brain replays the information so that it can be more permanently stored in long-term memory (probably the entorhinal cortex). We know at least some of this through studies of people with damage to the hippocampus or the entorhinal cortex, along with the sleep studies mentioned above and lots of animal studies.
The dreams themselves are probably just your brain trying to make sense of a series of random information that is being replayed. The actual important thing is likely to be the stream of imformation, which is probably not as coherent as even the most wild dreams. My dreams tend to jump all over the place, people turning into other people, myself teleporting to all sorts of random places.
We also know that memories can be altered any time they are replayed. This does suggest that a dream could help you practice for a given scenario, since when you're in the scenario itself you would probably act the way you remember from the dream. However, it's unlikely that this was the actual purpose of the dream.