From owner-biophys@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk Tue Jun 26 13:07:36 2001 Return-Path: Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3B5A917B27 for ; Tue, 26 Jun 2001 13:07:33 +0100 (BST) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 11D8E17B32 for ; Tue, 26 Jun 2001 13:07:20 +0100 (BST) Received: from niobium.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (niobium [193.62.192.41]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id C5E6A17B29 for ; Tue, 26 Jun 2001 13:07:02 +0100 (BST) Received: (from news@localhost) by niobium.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (8.9.3+Sun/8.8.8) id NAA15026 for biophys-list@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk; Tue, 26 Jun 2001 13:06:03 +0100 (BST) X-Authentication-Warning: niobium.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk: news set sender to using -f Message-ID: <3B387E81.E6DA83DF@mail.ncifcrf.gov> From: "Dr. Artem Evdokimov" Organization: NCI-FCRDC PSB-MCL Protein Engineering X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.74 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en,uk,ru MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Newsgroups: bionet.biophysics Subject: Re: Relativity biology, part II References: <20010626014103.02609.00001103@ng-fd1.aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 24 Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 08:22:25 -0400 To: biophys@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk Sender: owner-biophys@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk Precedence: bulk > recollection) that a fly has reflexes 1,000 times quicker than that of an > average human. Is there any truth in this, and is there any correlation? Many insects have flight/fight patterns 'burned' directly into the neural nets connecting the sensory organs and the motory organs. Cockroaches for instance, literally 'run first, think later'. Us humans spend time thinking about the threat (and calling 911) and thus our reflexes are not so fast. The speed of neural tranmission versus the length of an average connection would be things to watch out for. If you can uniformly speed up the transmission of action potential in and between the neurons, you might be able to 'clock up the cpu' so to speak. However, the speed of action propagation is limited by the build of the neuron and particularly by the speed of the inter-neuron communication which is based on release and uptake of chemicals (which takes time). A. -- |Dr. Artem Evdokimov Protein Engineering | | NCI-Frederick Tel. (301)846-5401 | | FAX (301)846-7148 | | eudokima@mail.ncifcrf.gov | | http://www.ncifcrf.gov/plague | .