Friday, September 08, 2017
Internal commerce?
Trying to snaz up the courseware text a bit, I was writing about ganglia as waystations and interchanges.
Toll booths?
Interesting thought. Is there for-profit commerce inside the organism? Do some organs intentionally charge tolls or fees for their filtering or distribution or differentiating services?
There is negotiation for sure in the nervous system. Bilateral senses involve a lot of fast diplomacy to insure that the more important or clearer side gets to give the news** to the consuming consciousness. Do some of the ganglia participate in the bargaining solely to acquire more hormones and neurotransmitter? Stockbroker cells? Renal rentiers? Gangliasters?
** Wouldn't it be GODDAMN NICE if macro-scale news gatherers worked this way? Simple example is 'lazy eye'. One eye is dim or out of kilter. The brain doesn't atrophy the eye, but it constantly checks to see which eye is giving a clearer and more usable picture of reality. The image from the bad eye is there but it's masked and overpowered by the good eye. If the good eye is covered up or unfocused, the bad eye instantly takes over. It's still out of kilter, but skewed news is temporarily better than no news.
Come to think of it, the trouble with macro-scale news is that the bad eyes have squashed all the good eyes, so negotiation wouldn't matter.
¶ 4:57 PM 
