[HN Gopher] How the Brain Balances Excitation and Inhibition
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How the Brain Balances Excitation and Inhibition
Author : FromTheArchives
Score : 52 points
Date : 2025-09-29 15:40 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org)
| rossant wrote:
| Fascinating topic, especially given how E/I imbalance is linked
| to several neuropsychiatric disorders such as epilepsy, autism or
| schizophrenia. [1]
|
| Coincidentally, I published a paper in the Journal of
| Neuroscience during my PhD demonstrating with a simple
| mathematical model how E/I balance enabled neurons to be highly
| sensitive to precise spike timing. [2]
|
| [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6742424/
|
| [2] https://www.jneurosci.org/content/31/47/17193.short
| magicnubs wrote:
| It all comes down to glutamate and gaba again. It's been really
| interesting to see how fundamental these two molecules are as I
| have learned more about medical biology/neurology. They are
| implicated in so many medical and psychiatric conditions, yet you
| tend to hear much more about the monoamine transmitters
| (serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, etc). But they are also
| hard to target for therapeutic purposes because gabaergics
| (barbituates, alcohol, z-drugs, etc) are often dangerously
| addictive; gaba just feels good... until the bill comes due.
| Maybe someday we will find a way to upregulate gaba activity in
| the body/brain without the inevitable crash. Hopefully we will,
| at least for the sake of people that suffer from over/under-
| excitatatory diseases.
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