Article: Waves at the Oasis
By Andrew Koob, author of The Root of Thought
The study of thought in ‘neuro’ science created many interesting trends and ideas. In the middle ages we believed they were controlled by spirits and soon after we believed they were fluids pumped hydraulically by the pituitary gland. In ancient times some speculated it was the heart that controlled our thoughts. Freud believed they were controlled by sex. Jung explored spirituality and dreams. The counterculture thought they could understand them through drugs. And this frontier has still not been breached today. We don’t know where our consciousness and thoughts spring from. Now we talk about our neuronal firing and short circuits in our brains and the ‘interconnectivity’ of neuronal signaling. But this cell-based notion of thought and everything that has sprung from it might be an illusion – a mirage in the field of ‘neuro’ science.
But the sun is coming up over the desert – its light creeping over the sand and revealing another oasis. In the past 20 years, it has come to the attention of ‘neuro’ scientists that the neuron might not be exclusively responsible for higher thought. Neurons might not be responsible at all. Glial cells in the brain, previously thought to be non-active, non-functioning cells solely existing to provide nutritional support for neurons, are now known to be active and functioning and providing a role much more than support. In the study of thought and brain science, we are limited by two things – the fact that we are only able to study what our senses can comprehend through limited techniques we’ve designed, and the paradoxical nature of trying to understand thought with thought.
In the late 19th and early 20th century when the notion of the neuron was being solidified as the incremental building block responsible for our higher thoughts, it sprung from a battle between two scientists. Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the father of ‘neuro’ science, and the scientist with the largest following and more hardened data prevailed. But he might not have been right. He extrapolated grand ideas about the neuron in the late 19th and early 20th century. But even Ramón y Cajal stated in one of his many detailed books “What is the function of these glial cells…? The answer is still not known and the problem is even more serious because it might remain unsolved for many years to come until physiologists find direct methods to attack it.”
Essentially, by Ramón y Cajal’s admission, glial cells, the most numerous cell in the brain – 90% of the organ that is responsible for our comprehension of our environment – were put on the back burner simply because they couldn’t be researched with the techniques available, not because of some inherent inferiority. However, the precedent he set meant almost all time and energy went into neuronal research throughout the entire 20th century. The problem of glial cell functioning wasn’t attacked until the late 80s and early 90s.
Today we extrapolate grand ideas about the glial cell, mainly the class of glial cell called the astrocyte. We know astrocyte cell size and ratio in the cortex of the brain increases up the evolutionary ladder, with humans having the highest and the biggest. We know they signal to each other and to neurons. We know they are the adult stem cells in the brain. The possibility for them to be flexed like a muscle and grow brings new insights into how our minds work. Neuroscientists, ahem, glioscientists are right now making deep chiasmic rifts in what we thought we knew and illuminating wonderful horizons of what we have yet to discover.
Perhaps the most valuable insight into astrocytes is that they communicate in waves – fluid exchanges of calcium that pass through gates connecting cell to cell. This makes more sense if one thinks about how we think. There are not set rules in how we think or how to think. The waves can be instigated by neurons firing the information brought in long distances from the senses. But the calcium waves can also be sparked sporadically. Calcium puffs in cells occur like raindrops on a lake. This idea seems to be more in line with our limitless capability for imagination and creativity than the strict, rigid and limited firing of neurons.
Astrocyte wave based signaling moves and spreads through our cortex, flowing past the totality of infinite possibilities of thought. The waves splash through the demarcation between catalogs and clocks into love and timelessness as we ponder our existence or existence itself.
The Root of Thought explores these implications of the recent advances in the astroctye and how we came to believe in neuron dominance at the expense of these beautiful intricate cells. The book proposes a theory about how astrocytes might be responsible for higher thought and subsequently how they may contribute to injury and degenerative disease. As the real implications of astrocytes contributing to higher thought are not only abstract but very practical. For the sake of understanding degenerative diseases of the brain, lets hope it’s not another mirage.