Neuroscientist Bruce McEwen, who studied the impact of stress on the brain, has died 1/3/20
McEwen’s work has profound implications for public health, impacting conditions from normal aging to neurodegenerative disease, depression, and PTSD.
Historical perspective on his life’s works:
1/1/20 Happy New Year! Unless you are a biologically uninformed theorist. See:Human sperm displays rapid responses to diet
This rapid response to a [microRNA-mediated] dietary intervention on tsRNA in human sperm is attuned with the paternal intergenerational metabolic responses found in model organisms.
1/1/20 All serious scientists can find details that link energy-dependent microRNA-mediated biophysically constrained viral latency to cell type differentiation and healthy longevity across kingdoms, in Genome-Wide Study Reveals a Novel Regulatory Pathway: Translation Affects mRNA Stability in a Codon-Dependent Manner 6/26/19
For more information on diet-driven pheromone-controlled sympatric speciation, see also: Celebrating 50 Years of Neuroscience 1/2/20
The SfN founders’ stated goals, “to advance understanding of nervous systems and their role in behavior, to promote education in the neurosciences, and to inform the general public on results and implications of current research,” remain the focus of SfN today.
Almost 10 years later in January of 1981, SfN published the first issue of the Journal of Neuroscience to fulfill its mission of communicating neuroscience research broadly.
Subsequently, every effort was made by theorists to avoid linking the claims made in 1) McEwen et al., (1964) Dependence of RNA synthesis in isolated thymus nuclei on glycolysis, oxidative carbohydrate catabolism and a type of “oxidative phosphorylation” to the claims made about the energy-dependent biophysically constrained RNA-mediated sexual differentiation of cell types in 2) McEwen, BS (1981) Neural gonadal steroid actions
1) The synthesis of RNA in isolated thymus nuclei is ATP dependent.
2) Neurons sensitive to gonadal steroids are located strategically within neural circuits that mediate behaviors broadly related to the reproductive process. Some neuronal events and properties are regulated by these hormones. Variability in the occurrence and distribution of particular neural hormonal sensitivities across species may be related to variations in the hormonal requirements for sexual differentiation and for activation of reproductive behaviors.
See for comparison: Multisensory Integration and the Society for Neuroscience: Then and Now 1/2/20
…it is interesting to note that this knowledge is often underrepresented in graduate training and in the training of medical professionals. Although the number of recognized senses has increased, most textbooks continue to divide sensory function by modality without the counterbalance of how they interact and change as a result of that interaction. From this perspective, the field has not yet fully matured, and there exists an odd disconnect between what is generally recognized and what is generally communicated to students.
Revisiting the Stress Concept: Implications for Affective Disorders 1/2/20 by
Figure 1.
The brain is a primary organ that perceives and responds to what is stressful to an individual. The major function of cortisol and other mediators of allostasis is to promote adaptation.
Every aspect of biophysically constrained ecological adaptation is food energy-dependent and microRNA-mediated in species from microbes to humans in the context of the pheromone-controlled physiology of reproduction and sympatric speciation. Feedback loops linked to viral latency are required. No neural circuits “evolve.”
Generation, Coordination, and Evolution of Neural Circuits for Vocal Communication 1/2/20
See for comparison: Feedback loops link odor and pheromone signaling with reproduction (2005)
See also: Olfaction Warps Visual Time Perception 3/3/17
In case you missed all the experimentally established links from the Creation of the sense of smell in bacteria to our visual perception of energy and mass in the context of the space-time continuum, or if you still believe in the pseudoscientific nonsense touted by theorists who believe in the “evolution of vocal communication,” See:
Neuroscience and Sex/Gender: Looking Back and Forward 1/2/20
More information on sex differences over the life span, beginning at birth, would also be useful. Early life is a time when interventions may have maximal impact. Future research might also explore how different types of factors, such as early testosterone exposure and parental socialization, work together in the developmental system that produces sex/gender differences in brain and behavior.
An Annotated Journey through Modern Visual Neuroscience 1/2/20
What remains is to determine, on single trials, exactly how many cells and of which type and in which brain region are responsible for specific forms of perception, and to what extent such computations are distributed across different levels of the visual hierarchy.
See for comparison: Evolutionists Cannot Account for the Origin of the Sense of Smell
Try to move forward without learning anything about how the light-activated assembly of the microRNA-RNA-peptide nanocomplex links the Creation of ATP and the Creation of RNA to biophysically constrained viral latency and healthy longevity via the focus on Hippocampal Place Cells or any other obfuscation of established cause and effect.
See: Five Decades of Hippocampal Place Cells and EEG Rhythms in Behaving Rats
How hippocampal computations affect downstream structures to facilitate memory-guided behaviors remains more of a mystery.
See for comparison: Scent of Eros: Mysteries of Odor in Human Sexuality 1995/2002
What aspect of memory-guided behavior has not been linked to food odors and pheromones?
See for instance: Pheromones and the luteinizing hormone for inducing proliferation of neural stem cells and neurogenesis
See also: [Pheromonal regulation of genetic processes: research on the house mouse (Mus musculus L.)] (1994)
A study of the influence of pheromone stressor(s) on proliferating germ and somatic cells was performed on laboratory lines of house mouse in the context of the physiological hypothesis of mutation process, proposed by M.E. Lobashev in 1947. Data from experiments are presented, and results obtained during last 10-15 years are discussed. The adaptive role of cytogenetic and other observed pheromonal effects is considered. The possible existence of interorganism systems of genetic regulation is discussed, the search for and study of which may help in more complete understanding of the regularities of functioning of genetic material.
Bruce S. McEwen was one of the first to recognize the need to understand how pheromones epigenetically effected the function of supercoiled DNA. We met to discuss the facts in the early 1990s, after I asked him to comment on a manuscript I had prepared for presentation as “Luteinizing Hormone (LH): The link between sex and the sense of smell.”
We continue to work with our collaborators to explore the precision and variance of synapses across brain regions, various species, and ultimately in humans to understand the impact of brain disease on information storage.
Where do you think the information came from?
See:
See also
Of Molecules and Mechanisms 1/2/20
…molecular biology drives modern neuroscience. The past 50 years has been nothing short of revolutionary as key findings have moved the field from correlation toward causation. Most obvious are the discoveries and strategies that have been used to build tools for visualizing circuits, measuring activity, and regulating behavior. Less flashy, but arguably as important are the myriad investigations uncovering the actions of single molecules, macromolecular structures, and integrated machines that serve as the basis for constructing cellular and signaling pathways identified in wide-scale gene or RNA studies and for feeding data into informational networks used in systems biology.
Under the Mind’s Hood: What We Have Learned by Watching the Brain at Work 1/2/20
Noninvasive human brain imaging and neurophysiology have continued developing at a relentless pace ever since.
The Next 50 Years of Neuroscience 1/2/20
Presently, neuroscience is funded in many countries through numerous agencies; however, recent national and international initiatives facilitating large-scale interdisciplinary neuroscience are emerging. The BRAIN Initiative and the Human Brain Project, for example, have not focused on one specific area of neuroscience but instead embraced participation from researchers spanning science, engineering, math, and technology.
In other words, all the claims made in the context of Celebrating 50 Years of Neuroscience, are merely another funding ploy, carefully designed to obfuscate the facts about biophysically constrained viral latency and sympatric speciation that Bruce S. McEwen established in 1964. Every aspect of energy-dependent life in every organism on Earth is ATP-dependent and RNA-mediated. His refutation of neo-Darwinian pseudoscientific nonsense and Big Bang cosmology was perfectly clear. And others have tried to cloud the picture for 55 years.
James V. Kohl detailedl how quantized energy-dependent microRNA biogenesis links the pheromone-controlled physiology of reproduction to biophysically constrained viral latency and healthy longevity. Links from what organisms eat to the enzyme-dependent metabolism of food also link metabolic networks to microRNA-mediated genetic networks in the context of RNA interference. Drug therapies alter RNA interference by altering cell type differentiation in all cells of all individuals of all species. For comparison, during the past 26 years, Kohl has detailed how the chemistry of protein folding is biophysically constrained at every level of biological organization by conserved molecular mechanisms.