One putative ssHSP inhibitory factor might be PKMζ, a causal agent for enduring LTP (Sacktor, 2008). Definitively determining the role of ssHSP in the duration of LTP would again require a specific inhibitor of the process. Progress in this field may Docetaxel order lead to a new framework for our understanding of information stability in single neurons and networks. Homeostasis is a feature of life, and almost all physiological parameters are subject to homeostasis in living beings. Some neurological disease states feature synaptic

dysregulation and abnormal connectivity, which may signify homeostatic failure. Further work in this field could help clarify this picture and eventually aid in developing therapeutic strategies. “
“The philosopher Malebranche noted in 1674 that “the mind does not pay equal attention to everything that it perceives. For it applies itself infinitely more to those things that affect it, that modify it, and that penetrate it, than to those that do not affect it and do not belong to it” (p. 412) (Malebranche, Obeticholic Acid 1997). In the ensuing 300+ years, research on selective attention has continually progressed, and although we have made careful behavioral measurements using the tools of psychophysics, poked and prodded neural

circuits with electrodes, and taken fancy pictures of human brains in action, we still have a vague understanding of how neuronal networks work in concert so

that the mind “…applies itself infinitely more to those things that affect it….” Thus, we are rich in our knowledge of what and where, but poor in our understanding of how the brain prioritizes relevant over irrelevant sensory inputs. Here, Pestilli et al. (2011) use well-validated experimental and quantitative frameworks to evaluate the relative contribution of three candidate mechanisms by which selective information processing might operate: response enhancement, noise reduction, and the efficient selection of sensory responses during decision making. Over the last 35 years, most research has focused on the notion also that selective attention operates by increasing the firing rate of neurons that are tuned to relevant spatial locations, objects, or features. Computationally, response gain should improve the reliability of neural signals as long as the variance of the firing rate does not increase faster than the mean. Attention-induced gain is also ubiquitous, extending from the earliest stages of cortical processing in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) all the way through areas of frontal cortex, with the degree of response enhancement progressively increasing across the cortical hierarchy (from about 20%–30% in midlevel areas such as V4 to almost 100% in prefrontal cortex; Serences and Yantis, 2006 and Treue, 2003).