Hello again, it has not even been a day yet, but I feel that I should quick post something. Some of the comments from my previous blog have pointed out interesting ideas as to the correlation between protein folding and memory storage.

Proteins inside neurons would work well in storing and possibly managing information, but they don’t work quickly enough and I suppose it would be fairly difficult to research proteins in the hundreds of thousands of specialized neurons. I was also informed that much of the “protein hypothesis” is old news that was torpedoed in the 60’s for the “synapse hypothesis” due to lack of technology to model such interactions. However, the “protein hypothesis” has reared its head once again in recent years and (I feel) is worth looking into further, although it may still be hard to conceptualize. Also, it was pretty insulting to say that little research has been done in this field and that Allan Pack is the sole researcher still working on this. Many researchers are still busy working away on this subject (don’t believe everything MPR tells ya’).

I haven’t had a chance to read some of the research recommended to me yet as I am still just a kid (a fact that some have pointedly stated to me, thanks for the insight) and still have a life before graduate school (i.e. I run Cross Country, talk to girls, and watch movies outside of studying). Continue to post further links on this please! I will do my best to be more to the point (shorter blogs) spell correctly (sorry Myers) and stop feeding you heathens further fuel for the spiritual flames of damnation :P (I’m a Christian, get over it!). Thanks for the comments, continue to inform me on how I can do a better job at this.

This is the last time I’ll say it and will truly stick to science after this, but I can’t resist, God bless!
~Bright Lights

Hello! I’m a student of Dr. Myers here at the lovely University of Minnesota Morris and will be blogging weekly for the next few months about whatever I find or dream up that relates to Neurobiology.

This week I suppose the most interesting finding I have comes from 89.3 “The Current,” an off-branch of the popular MPR radio station. There is a program called “Radio Lab,” in which a couple show hosts review scientific work done in broad categories while they converse and explore the work of scientists who actually did the research. One of the categories for the week was on sleep; why do we need it? What does it really do? The show hosts revealed that very little research has been done in this field (despite its necessity to all living things) except for Dr. Allan Pack, a biologist at the University of Pensylvania.

Pack has been looking at sleep from a cellular level and has found some interesting activity with proteins in cells inside the brain. He found that when we don’t sleep, proteins fold irregularly and lose much of their primary functions. However, when we sleep, the proteins are unfolded and allowed to work normally. Even more intruiging is that the folding of these proteins might be correlated to memory. For instance, when you memorize or think about a difficult math problem or guitar riff, you fold proteins. But that means that when you look at the grass and use your brain to determine the grass’s color and shape you are folding proteins as well.

When we sleep this unfolding of proteins allows some of the garbage memory, such as shape and color of grass, to be disposed of in the unfolding of proteins, which also amplifies the things we truly scrutinized all day on such as the math problems or guitar riff as these proteins are left folded. This may be why when you’re studying one day on a tough problem and can’t quite get it but go to bed and look at it again the next, the problem sometimes comes much easier. I thought that this was a cool idea, and well worth looking into.

If anyone finds any of this interesting and does some further (or actual) research on the topic, you should respond and we can exchange ideas. But untill that day, take it easy and God bless.
~Bright Lights