[ale] Hardening of the brain

[fd0man™—The Magical Floppy Man]

On Wed, 2006-08-02 at 11:49 -0400, Bruce Jones wrote:

> Magical Floppy Man,
> 
> I went thru a similar scenario with my in laws several years ago, to no
>  availe. There is a fairly recent discovery that the brain uses a fat
>  called myolin to "sheather" neuron pathways that we use frequently.
>  These sheathed pathways pass information at a much faster rate thatn
>  normal neuron connections, thus the phrase, "You can't teach an old
>  dog, new tricks" has some basis in brain chemistry, as you get older,
>  you literally get "set" (in myolin) in your ways, and loose the option
>  to change (or at least it gets really hard).
> 
> Bruce
> 


Very interesting.  So, what you are saying is that as a task becomes
repetitive to someone, this fat helps to make the neural pathways that
are used to "store" the information streamlined, making them easier to
recall?  Does this have something to do with REM sleep and how it helps
to solidify long-term memories, or is it something separate?

It is an interesting concept, regardless.

    ? Mike

--
The fd0man??The Magical Floppy Man! (fd0man at gmail.com) 
"One world, one web, one program"  ?Microsoft promotional ad 
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer"  ?Adolf Hitler 
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