Ed Boyden: prediction

Transcript context

…If I think about memory, is it possible that it’s more than just synapse connections, that there’s some kind of RNA-based calculation supplementing what we normally think of as memory? How well do we understand memory? I think what we have learned from the history of biology is that, if a biological system could use some biological resource to get something done, it will. You bring up the question of RNA. Brain cells have one nucleus with a genome inside but thousands of synaptic connections. Does it make sense to only have genes on or off at the nucleus level? You might want to turn genes on or off at the synapse level. One of the things, actually, that our group published a couple years ago is a technology, a version of expansion microscopy, where we could actually try to map out which expressed genes are located at which synapses. We can take a brain and blow it up and then look at where the expressed genes are cached or stored throughout the brain cell. Now several groups are, I think, using such technologies to try to map out whether, indeed, all the different biomolecular types are involved with plasticity. It’s kind of early days, but previous groups — before we even unveiled this technology — had found some evidence that when you activate a brain cell, interesting transcriptional spatial changes occur. In fact, one of my favorite studies was done by a group in Utah. They found when brain cells are active, they turn on a gene, and this gene looks a lot like the coat protein of the HIV virus, the same virus that causes AIDS. Maybe even more amazingly, when a brain cell is active, it manufactures virus-like particles that can bring genetic material from one brain cell to another. It’s kind of wacky to think about it, when you actually put your mind to it. When you’re forming a memory, is your brain manufacturing HIV-like things, and you’re exchanging genetic material from one brain cell to the next? What the heck is going on? But I think that just shows how little we know about the mechanisms of brain function. Here’s a real softball of a question. Is consciousness a fundamental feature of the universe or an illusion? Is metaphysical dualism true?…

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