Neuronal activity could certainly affect gene regulation! so yeah, I think it’s possible (which is not a strong claim...lots of things “regulate” other things, that doesn’t necessarily make them effective intervention points)
Yeah, of course it affects gene regulation. I’m saying that—maayybe—nature has specific broad patterns of gene expression associated with powerful cognition (mainly, creativity and learning in childhood); and since these are implemented as GRNs, they’ll have small, discoverable on-off switches. You’re copying nature’s work about how to tune a brain to think/learn/create. With ultrasound, my impression is that you’re kind of like “ok, I want to activate GABA neurons in this vague area of the temporal cortex” or “just turn off the amygdala for a day lol”. You’re trying to figure out yourself what blobs being on and off is good for thinking; and more importantly you have a smaller action space compared to signaling molecules—you can only activate / deactivate whatever patterns of gene expression happen to be bundled together in “whatever is downstream of nuking the amygdala for a day”.
we have really not fully explored ultrasound and afaik there is no reason to believe it’s inherently weaker than administering signaling molecules.
Signaling molecules can potentially take advantage of nature’s GRNs. Are you saying that ultrasound might too?
Neuronal activity could certainly affect gene regulation! so yeah, I think it’s possible (which is not a strong claim...lots of things “regulate” other things, that doesn’t necessarily make them effective intervention points)
Yeah, of course it affects gene regulation. I’m saying that—maayybe—nature has specific broad patterns of gene expression associated with powerful cognition (mainly, creativity and learning in childhood); and since these are implemented as GRNs, they’ll have small, discoverable on-off switches. You’re copying nature’s work about how to tune a brain to think/learn/create. With ultrasound, my impression is that you’re kind of like “ok, I want to activate GABA neurons in this vague area of the temporal cortex” or “just turn off the amygdala for a day lol”. You’re trying to figure out yourself what blobs being on and off is good for thinking; and more importantly you have a smaller action space compared to signaling molecules—you can only activate / deactivate whatever patterns of gene expression happen to be bundled together in “whatever is downstream of nuking the amygdala for a day”.