From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Dec 30 2000 - 19:48:02 MST
eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de writes:
> http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/290/5500/2275
>
> NEUROSCIENCE: Boosting Working Memory
...
> This anatomical organization leads to an obvious strategy for
> improving working memory: increasing the amount of acetylcholine in
> synapses. That this strategy works is demonstrated by Furey et al. (2)
Ha! What did I say at Extro3?! And Transvision 1,2 and 3?!!
Acetylcholine is the key to EVERYTHING!! Muhahaha! (Sorry, it is three
in the morning and I have been trying to understand spin glass theory)
Actually, that ACh is involved in this way is nothing truly
unexpected, but we need better control of it to really modulate memory
and perhaps attention well. The interesting thing here is that it is
apparently involved with *working* memory, which is definitely going
to add some more fuel to the debate about what distinguishes different
memory systems from each other. Is it just the timespan of storage, or
do they have different architectures? This study seem to imply that
ACh acts by modifying the input to the frontal working memory systems,
possibly in an attentional manner. This is very nice and a bit
unexpected (at least to me), but still leaves the issue of what
determines the frontal working memory capacity and how much it can be
modulated.
Sorry for the rambling, but I'm definitely low on ACh right now. I'll
sleep on the article and see what I can find out...
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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