Arthur Konnerth is the seminar speaker this week. We had a nice talk at lunch about how electro-physiology was bullshit because of how it interrupts the normal circuit properties of the cell. Stabbing into the cell ruduces the membrane resistance adds a time constant. He was quite challenging no matter which way the conversation went, it was an interesting way of talking about science. At times I felt like I would make a statement agreeing with his point and in return he would come back and question its validity. A prime example was how it would be great to measure the absolute voltages of a cell. I agreed, and then he came back at me questioning the need to. A lot of talk about what it is we are trying to do, and he really challenged me on what I think would come of mapping efforts. We hit upon exploratory vs. hypothesis driven types of Science.
He gave a good talk. It was mainly about the paper where he could measure the individual spine calcium signals and showed that the "inputs" to the dendrites -- calcium in spines, were tuned like "salt and pepper" across the dendrites. Some bias with the neuron's receptive field, but he said he didn't really have enough data to prove so. It was nice he showed that even across different cortical areas there was this salt and pepper to the inputs. (Mainly looking at L2/3 pyramids).
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