Sending hope to Mars

Sending sound to the brain.

The cochlear implant, a microelectrode array that directly stimulates the auditory nerve, has greatly benefited many individuals with profound deafness. Deaf patients without an intact auditory nerve may be helped by the next generation of auditory prostheses: surface or penetrating auditory brainstem implants that bypass the auditory nerve and directly stimulate auditory processing centers in ...

Sending a message to the other side.

The cell membrane provides a physical barrier that separates the internal contents of a cell from the surrounding environment. This separation enables the generation of higher (or lower) concentrations of chemicals within the cell compared to the extracellular conditions. Furthermore, it enables the formation of electrochemical gradients across the cell membrane that can be used to drive biolog...

Inhibitory Activation to Region Sending Region Sending Neuron A Neuron A Neuron A Neuron A Receptive

The Hebbian hypothesis of activity-dependent synaptic plasticity has gained much support from experimental studies of long-term potentiation and depression. Such studies have also uncovered complex patterns of competition among the synapses. Such eeects may be due to the neuron redistributing its limited synaptic resources as synaptic strengths change. In computational models this strategy is c...

Sending signals dynamically.

Proteins mediate transmission of signals along intercellular and intracellular pathways and between the exterior and the interior of a cell. The dynamic properties of signaling proteins are crucial to their functions. We discuss emerging paradigms for the role of protein dynamics in signaling. A central tenet is that proteins fluctuate among many states on evolutionarily selected energy landsca...

Timeline: Sending Out an SOS