Precognition observed in hippocampus of mice

**eyeoneblack** · 12th February 2011, 04:16 PM

Researchers at MIT performed experiments on mice such that the firing of 'place cells' in an area of the hippocampus could be recorded. Excerpts from the actual article follow but in plain speech (as best I can make of it) 'place cells' relate to the brains mapping of a trajectory through space - simply running down a track. At rest or slow wave sleep these place cells fire again to consolidate the memory.

By elaborate means and statistical fortitude the scientists were able to show that not only did the place cells fire to consolidate a known memory but others fired relating to a track they hadn't seen yet. They went so far as to record place cell sequences in mice who had no track experience at all and were isolated in a box that correlated to a track in the same room but not visible to them. In other words, the mice recorded the experience before they encountered the track. They call this PREPLAY as opposed to replay.

How can we account for this? The researchers don't speculate as to HOW, but it seems to me the simplest explanation would be that the tracks were not actually hidden from the mice if the mice could explore them in a non-physical body. That the mice exhibited an 'otherwhereness' of awareness.

The following is excerpted from nature magazine 20 Jan 2011

Preplay of future place cell sequences by hippocampal cellular assemblies

George Dragoi and Susumu Tonegawa
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT

During spatial exploration, hippocampal neurons show a sequential firing pattern in which individual neurons fire specifically at particular locations along the animal's trajectory (place cells).[Â¶ inserted for readability]

According to the dominant model of hippocampal cell assembly activity, place cell firing order is established for the first time during exploration, to encode the spatial experience, and is subsequently replayed during rest or slow-wave sleep for consolidation of the encoded experience.[Â¶]

Here we report that temporal sequences of firing of place cells expressed during a novel spatial experience occurred on a significant number of occasions during the resting or sleeping period preceding the experience.[Â¶]

[from the body of the article]

We have demonstrated that a significant number of temporal firing sequences of CA1 cells during resting periods of a familiar track exploration that preceded a novel track exploration in the same general environment were correlated with the place cell sequences of the novel track rather than the familiar track. This phenomenon, preplay, is temporally opposite to the process of replay, when activity during rest or sleep periods recapitulates place cell sequences that have already occurred during previous exploration. Preplay differs fundamentally from replay because it occurs before exploration of novel tracks.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 09633.html

sono · 17th February 2011, 05:00 AM

Torturous but great to know they're finally on to it! Thanks for the heads up!

**eyeoneblack** · 21st February 2011, 02:14 PM

Thanks Sono and you're right - torturous. I'll give it another try

.

Let me see if I can spark any interest in this mice hippocampus thing. To me, the actual observation of precognition under controlled conditions raises the question of the nature of our other-than-physical bodies. What these mice are telling me is we need maybe to drop the word 'body' and adopt 'being' in its place - our energy beings, or better, wave-functions.

Let me explain. We have an experiment that involves two tracks joined at the ends at right angles to each other - an angle icon. A track is simply a strip of various colored tiles aligned end-to-end. There is a sight barrier dividing the two uniquely designed tracks so that a mouse on one cannot see the other. The mice are allowed to run a track and the firing of 'place cells' in the hippocampus is recorded. The mice are then allowed to rest and sleep. The researchers were then able to compare the sequence of place cell firings during rest and slow-wave sleep with the 'learning' sequence and discovered, as expected, the hippocampus was rehearsing or replaying the sequence of firing during discovery - consolidating the memory.

Then the mice were allowed to run the unseen track. They noticed that during rest and slow-wave sleep following the run on the novel or new track the replay of the experience matched place cell firings that had occurred during R and SW sleep previous to the encounter with the novel track. The unique sequence associated with REPLAY of the novel track were present as PREPLAY during R and SW sleep of the first or familiar track.

They then took the experiment to another level. This time the researchers took mice that had never seen a track, kept them in a box with high sides and placed them in the room with but a single track. The mice could not and did not SEE the track, and yet during R and SW sleep the mice PREPLAYED the firing sequence of the track in the room!

The is real M.I.T. science, people. What can we make of it? As I suggested before, the simplest explanation for Preplay would be that the novel track wasn't actually hidden from the mice; somehow they saw it with something other than physical sight. Furthermore, if we assume that in order for the hippocampal cellular assemblies to fire, the track must be experienced (mere 'seeing' would not activate this process) the mice must have 'run' it with something other than their physical body.

First of all, I can hardly picture little astral mice walking through the partition or leaving the box to explore another track. That seems ludicrous to me, though not impossible. What I'd rather suggest is mice awareness simply extends a good deal beyond the physical body. Moreover, this awareness need not take the form of an energy body at all - it need not be confined, defined or in any way restricted. The mice are telling me (haha) that they behave in a quantum fashion in the same way that an electron may be a particle (body) or a wave (no body).

This idea would certainly add a twist to our understanding of energy bodies. As humans with well developed sense of self and identity I wonder if it isn't just a matter of convention that we create a body for our other energy selves? Mice, on the other hand, are prob more like Borg with no self-conscious concept of identity and likewise have no 'need' for an astral or mental body. The physical body of a mouse may be simply a locus within the wave functions of higher energy bodies.

What is true of mice is prob true of men

and all other creatures. I've often wondered how huge schools of fish manage to swim as one. When they change direction, they all change at the very same instant. We can explain this under the wave theory of energy bodies.

Obviously, I don't have this all hammered out, but what do you think?