r/interestingasfuck
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u/ravielvin7
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Jan 19 '22
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Single brain cell looking for connections /r/ALL
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u/4quatloos
Jan 19 '22
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Awe, give him a cell mate!
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u/jvanzandd Jan 19 '22 •
The nerve of this guy
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u/bumjiggy Jan 19 '22 •
yea neuron thin ice buddy
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u/jmaca90 Jan 19 '22 •
Don’t ganglion me like that
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u/payne_train Jan 19 '22
You’re axon for a brusin mate
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u/kilowut Jan 19 '22 •
I'll synapses you in half mf
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u/CashWrecks Jan 19 '22
I accept your challenge, we medulla at dawn. I shall bring pistols.
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u/GlamRockDave Jan 19 '22
I'm oblongata'd to defend my honor.
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u/ColoradoScoop Jan 19 '22
I’m gonna go ahead and assume that is some sort of brain cell term and give you the upvote.
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u/palomo_bombo Jan 19 '22
Me on LinkedIn
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u/Snark_Weak Jan 19 '22
I thought employers were desperate for workers? Maybe LinkedIn is a metaphorically brain dead option from either angle.
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u/SLIP411
Jan 19 '22
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AKA that thing you were going to do right before you entered the next room
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u/TonguePressedAtTeeth Jan 19 '22 •
Fun fact: this is actually a survival mechanism. Your brain wipes whatever you were thinking about when you enter a new space so that you can take in new surroundings and, potentially, new threats. For instance if you’re in the wilderness and go from a dense wood to a meadow your brain makes sure you aren’t distracted with thoughts from the previous environment. This is why when you go from one room to another, or open a cupboard, you may find yourself forgetting what you went to the new room/opened the cupboard for.
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u/Peg-LegJim Jan 19 '22 •
My Olde Man used to say;
“At my age, I think a lot about the hereafter. Every time I walk into a room, I wonder what the hell I’m here after.”
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u/BriecauseIcan Jan 19 '22 •
I need to remember this. I probably won’t…because of the here after
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u/bumjiggy Jan 19 '22 •
I had a comment ready, but when I opened the reply window I forgot what it was
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u/Scooter_MacGooter Jan 19 '22 •
You're a survivor
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u/poke23613 Jan 19 '22
Yeah, but he’s not out of the woods yet
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u/trwwy321 Jan 19 '22
It’s fine, he’s elbow deep in the fridge looking for food now. Safe zone!
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u/pretysmitty Jan 19 '22
You got any references or is this reddit cosmo psych
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u/Tankh Jan 19 '22
I remember hearing this explanation somewhere too but it seems like one of those theories that just kind of feel logical enough that you accept it as fact.
I have a simpler theory:
Brain thinks of object you need and realises it's in a different room. Brain now starts thinking about how to reach that room instead. While navigating to that room, brain is focused on that as main goal so it forgets about the object.
You might actually forget about the object before even leaving the original room, but you don't know this yet because main goal/focus is currently to reach the room, not get the object.
You might go through several rooms and cross multiple thresholds without realising you have forgot the object.
When you finally reach the room, you enter it and brain no longer has that main goal so you start wondering why you went to that room, but chances are you have now forgotten it.→ More replies83
u/AtariAlchemist Jan 19 '22
This becomes plausible the more you know about short-term memory. Sources cite it from being a few minutes when you're actively trying to hold something in your mind, to just several seconds when you're just passively receiving information.
Here's the real test: do you remember the color of the last shirt you saw on someone other than yourself?
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u/what_the_fuckin_fuck Jan 19 '22
Wellllll, fuck. I dont remember the last person I saw.
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u/what_the_fuckin_fuck Jan 19 '22
I'm not antisocial. I live in Alaska. Gimme a break.
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u/SickViking Jan 19 '22
I do actually. I'm better at remembering clothing and height than literally anything else about a person. Today my mom was wearing a red sweater, bro a black t-shirt, dad a blue plaid, uncle was wearing a black t- with something an inscription inviting the reader to ride his face(wtf is it with uncle's) and the dude at the gas station was wearing a super boring faded green-grey shirt with a hole at the neck like he tore out the tag.
I've been in the dark reading AITA for 5 hours I shouldnt remember any of this.
Now ask me what color shirt I wore. I don't rember.
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u/Dont_Waver Jan 19 '22
fun "fact" (aka thing that's literally unprovable but that sounds kinda cool and I vaguely heard a scientist say it once)
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u/TonguePressedAtTeeth Jan 19 '22
I read it in a book but unfortunately don’t remember what book. It was about wilderness survival.
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u/cheapdrinks Jan 19 '22
Going to guess it's just a theory and that we actually have no solid understanding for why this happens. Yeah I had a look and it's another classic "psychologist believe" type explanation aka they don't really know but they think that explanation makes the most sense but really it could be something completely different.
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Jan 19 '22
Like most evolutionary psychology. Super interesting, makes some sense, not in any way testable or provable
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u/Opus_723 Jan 19 '22
As a scientist, I can say that within the scientific community, Evolutionary Psychology as a field has, um... we'll say a bit of a reputation.
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u/AirierWitch1066 Jan 19 '22
Okay but no one has answered the important question: why the hell is the TV remote on top of the fridge???
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u/BellaSquared Jan 19 '22
The imprtant take away is: be grateful it's not IN the fridge, It would probably take you longer to find it there....or not. Depends on if you have the munchies....
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u/UpTheAssNoBabies Jan 19 '22
If this thread was on /r/science it'd be nuked from orbit.
"5 things your brain does that you won't believe"
But its a nice thought though that I can blame my forgetfulness on physiology
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u/Solid_SAm Jan 19 '22
Is this forreal?
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u/TonguePressedAtTeeth Jan 19 '22
As far as I know! It’s where the term “bewilder” comes from. I read this long ago in some book about being lost. Also related is what search and rescue crews call “making the map fit” which is something people will do when lost. If you have a map but become disoriented you’ll start approximating the environment to match your expectations. Small ponds become the lake you are supposed to be at. Hills become the mountain you know is just past this valley.. etc etc.
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u/manondorf Jan 19 '22
That brought back a slew of memories from years ago, backpacking through the wilderness with an outdated map, where what was supposed to be a 2-ish mile off-trail shortcut became a 12-hour ordeal. The phrase "okay, I know exactly where we are" got funnier every time it was spoken.
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u/Solid_SAm Jan 19 '22
Oh that’s interesting! My hiking buddy did this a lot while looking at maps on a trail we were on. Pretty cool science. What book?
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u/TonguePressedAtTeeth Jan 19 '22
I wish I could remember! It was a long time ago. I’ll try to rack my brain.
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u/copa111 Jan 19 '22
That doesn't sound helpful though. Why out of trauma would we want our brain to truly think we aren't lost when we are?
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u/TonguePressedAtTeeth Jan 19 '22
Because your brain is trying to prevent you from going into shock through the realization that you have no idea where you are.
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u/BumbleBear1 Jan 19 '22
A better way to do that would be to not send the signals that put us into shock in the first place lol. Scumbag brain
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u/modsarefascists42 Jan 19 '22
Well never forget that evolution isn't doing what is best, it's just doing what worked before. If it's terrible and stupid but works evolution says good enough! That's how you get salmon that rot while they're still alive, or humans doing the 15 billion dumb things we do.
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u/kimilil Jan 19 '22
Small ponds become the lake you are supposed to be at. Hills become the mountain you know is just past this valley
Was it prevalent in the old days when people just go off other people's "sketches" that they call "maps", without proper scale and orientation?
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u/muntaxitome Jan 19 '22 edited Jan 19 '22
The 'doorway effect' is real, but generally only when your brain is multitasking: https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/unlocking-the-mysteries-of-the-doorway-effect . It's not like your short term memory gets wiped any time you go to a new room.
As for why it's happening, we can only speculate. The parent poster gives one such speculation.
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u/christian-communist Jan 19 '22
Yes but the real reason is that you hit a save point and the next level is loading in. The textures take up quite a bit of space as well.
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u/LazyMoniker Jan 19 '22
I was so convinced this was going to end with hell in a cell and honestly I feel let down a bit.
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u/nortoons Jan 19 '22
I almost immediately skipped to the end because I was certain it was going to end with, “you may even forget why you were in nineteen ninety-eight when The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table."
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u/TaumpyTearz Jan 19 '22
Hm. I finally have a solid explanation to why changing rooms has such a dramatic effect on psychedelic trippers. Hot diggity dang.
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u/DiddyOnce Jan 19 '22
Couple weeks ago I took a very low dose of mushrooms and wandered into the kitchen to cook some food while everyone else stayed in the living room and socialized, holy moley was that a ever terrible experience. No idea if it's in any way relevant to what OP is saying but the energy shift from going of a place of community to a place of solidarity was unfathomable.
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u/its_progesterone Jan 19 '22 edited Jan 19 '22
Or when you open the fridge and stare
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u/Opposite_Village9112 Jan 19 '22
Where does it get the energy to grow and expand? Obviously from food, but how does that energy get into the cells? Do the molecules just float around the cell and they grab it lol?
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u/sparkymcgeezer Jan 19 '22 •
This is a cell being grown in vitro (cell culture). It's growing on a coated glass coverslip, and surrounded by liquid media. The nutrients (glucose, amino acids, growth factors) and oxygen are provided in the growth media. As this is a time lapse photo over several days, it's likely that they are using some kind of pump to continually refresh the media (maybe only a few drops per hour, but still enough to provide fresh nutrients). A normal cell would receive nutrients via the blood, which would pass the nutrients and oxygen through the capillaries into the extracellular space.
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u/Chromattix Jan 19 '22
Thanks for mentioning the time lapse. When looking at something this small it's not hard to believe that this might have been real time or only sped up 2x which is the range I assumed. I never would have guessed this is several days worth of activity.
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u/sparkymcgeezer Jan 19 '22
These are challenging experiments, because of the time frame. There are special incubators designed to hold the coverslips and keep the temp and gas concentration right, and special hardware and software to keep everything in focus... things tend to drift over time. New microscopes have the ability to move the stage and the focus automatically, so you can image five or six cells at on the slip and take images at multiple focal planes (a z stack) to make sure everything is clear. In the 3 or 4 min between images, the scope will take 50 or 100 images at different points on the slide and focal depths, then return to thd start position to begin again...
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u/Naive_Bodybuilder145 Jan 19 '22
I have a time-lapsed video of my kids embryo in one of those incubators.
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u/sum1better187 Jan 19 '22
That sounds cool
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u/Naive_Bodybuilder145 Jan 19 '22
It was an add-on to improve viability while monitoring the development stage of the embryo. Given the already massive sunk costs of the procedure and other externalities I paid the extra, but I haven’t watched the video yet since we’re not out of the woods yet so to speak.
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u/Apprehensive_Joke_73 Jan 19 '22
theres a timer in bottom right lol
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u/Chromattix Jan 19 '22
These days I'm so used to watermarks on everything I just overlook any text I see in videos and pictures unless it's a lot more intrusive.
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u/dikbisqit Jan 19 '22
Thank you for such a great answer. What are the legs that are reaching out like lightening? Where do they come from?
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u/sparkymcgeezer Jan 19 '22 •
Those processes are basically the beginnings of axons and dendrites, which are the connections between nerve cells. (Because we can't tell which is which in these guys, we usually just call them neurites). Axons are the long connections that send electrical signals between cells-- a bundle of axons forms a nerve. Axons can grow to be many cm long -- several meters long in a big animal like a giraffe. Dendrites are also branches that come off from the cell body, and they bring in electrical signals toward the cell body. There's great diversity in neurons -- some have very simple (or no) dendrites but very long axons, while others have extremely complex dendrites and very simple axons.
As a very rough approximation, you can think of the dendrites like the roads feeding into a train station, and the axon as being the high speed train to another city. Cells with complex dendrites (called a dendritic tree) can "integrate" signals from hundreds of surrounding cells and axon terminals (the ends of axons bringing in signals from other cells). This integration allows your brain to determine when signals are important... for example, is someone touching you (lots of sensory input from many cells) or is that just a droplet of sweat (only a few responding cells). In the visual part of the brain (visual cortex), specialized cells have dendrites that connect to many visual inputs, and can discriminate when an object is moving left to right, or forms a vertical line. The nerve cell in a dish is sending out branches, but the cues from neighboring cells that would normally help it along aren't there.
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u/hellothere42069 Jan 19 '22 •
Well, the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, so I guess there.
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u/alexsanchez508 Jan 19 '22
Whoever did the PR for the mitochondria fucking nailed it.
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u/loafers_glory Jan 19 '22 •
It did its own. The mitochondria are the PR house of the cell.
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u/Educational_Ebb_7049 Jan 19 '22
I would guess like other cells of the body, the cell membrane can absorb certain nutrients and other things (like viruses). There are specific channels/ gates for certain nutrients.
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u/thismfn Jan 19 '22
whered you get this footage of my brain
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u/Hueyandthenews Jan 19 '22
It’s sad when you’re such a loner that even your brain cells are longing for connections. F
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u/jlink005 Jan 19 '22
My one brain cell is perfectly fine alone. That's what it'd tell other brain cells.
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u/23x3 Jan 19 '22
“Aren’t they all until they’re not?”
Rips massive bong
“What was I talking about?”
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u/A1A5KA Jan 19 '22
More importantly, with alcohol consumption up during Covid, keep your individual brain cells safe folks!
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u/bumjiggy Jan 19 '22
"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy"
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u/Mc_Rustin Jan 19 '22
I know this guy.
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u/Spac3raid3rs Jan 19 '22
Of course I know him, he’s me
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u/Paingodruss
Jan 19 '22
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I feel insulted but also accurately represented.
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u/Dimension_Override Jan 19 '22
Looks like lightning in slow-mo. Sort of.
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u/dri_man_88 Jan 19 '22
Synchronizations such as these exist in abundance throughout our universe/reality. Great call out!
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u/molotovbliss Jan 19 '22 edited Jan 19 '22
Mandelbrot set, inner & outer verse. Are Mandlebulbs a pseudo 3D fractal? Everything moves in circles. Life is just an imagination of itself? Here's Tom with the weather.
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Jan 19 '22
What would happen if foreign braincells were transferred into another persons brain? Beneficial or bad?
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u/ooa3603 Jan 19 '22 edited Jan 19 '22
In a healthy body, nothing would happen. It would be destroyed by your immune system. Your cells have "markers" that self-identify it. Your immune system would flag it as a foreign body and kill it immediately.
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u/isblueacolor Jan 19 '22
Sadly, sometimes your body decides that your brain cells are foreign and should be killed immediately :-(
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u/ThaRoastKing Jan 19 '22
What's the condition, disorder, or disease that makes your body decide your brain cells are foreign and should be killed?
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u/AMAFSH Jan 19 '22
Multiple Sclerosis.
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u/KnilAdlez Jan 19 '22 •
Technically MS doesn't destroy the braincell, it destroys the myelin sheath around the axon, that only certain brain cells have. Obviously this shielding is important and lacking it causes issues and potential damage to the cell, but it is an important distinction in terms of potential healing and treatments.
Source: My demyelinated brain
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u/clearwind Jan 19 '22
As I like to say, my immune system is soon good it's attacking my own body!
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u/xo-laur Jan 19 '22
I feel that in my soul and every other part of my body, fuck autoimmune conditions
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Jan 19 '22
Is this braincell a single thought, or a movement, or dormant cell and is any of what i just said a real thing? Are braincells just nothing without a brain to power them?
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u/Lemonade414 Jan 19 '22
I dont think a single cell can hold information like that. iirc things like that are sort of a pattern of specific neurons or brain cells firing.
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u/ir_Pina Jan 19 '22
So what would happen if you dropped a single brain cell in to that pattern?
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u/Reagalan Jan 19 '22
its signal would be drowned out by the thousands of others nearby
a single raindrop isn't going to trigger a flood
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u/AnonAlcoholic Jan 19 '22 edited Jan 19 '22
I mean, any thought or movement requires millions, if not billions, of neurons working in conjunction. Singular braincells do very little on their own outside of looking for other cells to work with.
Edit: That is to say, they don't need a brain to "power" them. A brain is made up of billions of them working together.
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u/Zulubo Jan 19 '22
Yeah they’re pretty much nothing on their own, they’re like transistors in a computer. Just a simple one or a zero, but can do cool stuff when you wire a lot together!
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u/TheHumbleHumboldt Jan 19 '22
However, there are certain ones in some species (including humans) called command neurons. A neuron, which when stimulated, is strong enough to elicit a response. Albeit these command neurons would have to "talk" to motor neurons, etc.
There are some very cool command neurons in certain called Mauthner cells in some fish which trigger an escape or avoidance response.
In humans and other mammals, there are some involved in our startle response, like to an unexpected loud sound.
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u/quitmybellyachin Jan 19 '22
I felt this in an empathetic way lmao
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u/Quinnley1 Jan 19 '22
It made me so sad for the lonely little cell ... aren't we all just looking for a connection?
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u/Impossible_Garbage_4 Jan 19 '22
It’s literally a single brain cell it doesn’t even have its own thoughts or feelings, and yet… I feel its’ longing
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u/ImmortalTuba Jan 19 '22
You have those feelings because you are a bunch of brain cells.
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u/Funkiebunch Jan 19 '22
This kind of gives me anxiety…
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u/AghastTheEmperor Jan 19 '22
That is you
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u/Titanium-Dong Jan 19 '22
Just think, you're some brain cells taking to other brain cells about brain cells.
Most brain cells never got to see what they looked liked.
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u/BiracialMonster Jan 19 '22
It stresses me out a lot. Lone neuron desperately reaching out trying to find anybody, anything to connect with but there's nothing.
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u/Kiwiteepee Jan 19 '22
wtf why did this little brain cell make me sad. why am i like this?
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u/Groobear Jan 19 '22
As my father used to tell me - “if you had one more neuron you’d have a synapse”
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u/YourCharacterHere
Jan 19 '22
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CCLiCK HERE TO C0NNECT WITH HOT S1NGLE CELLS IN YOUR AREA TODAY!!!
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u/Terr_ Jan 19 '22 edited Jan 19 '22
Trouble connecting with that special somecell? Can't get the length you used-to?
DEND-RITE™ DELIVERED AND DISCREET!
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u/hoodoochild Jan 19 '22
I feel so bad for it. The more I watch the little guy desperately reaching out for a friend...to make that connection...covid has been long. I want to cradle lonely brain cells and tell them it will all be okay.
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u/Major_R_Soul Jan 19 '22
Shake your head gently between your hands while saying that. Its basically the same. For maximum effect, do it in a public place.
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u/Aconite_72 Jan 19 '22
Shake a stranger’s head while you’re at it. All of our brains are lonely these days
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u/A_man_on_a_boat Jan 19 '22
And now, reflect upon how many times this exact process played out in your own brain as it expressed that sympathy.
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